THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  BOOK  of  the  POE 
CENTENARY 


A  Record  of  the  Exercises  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia   January  16-19, 
1909,  in  Commemoration  of  the 
One  Hundredth   Birthday 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 


CHARLES  W.  KENT,  Linden  Kent  Memorial  School  of 
English  Literature 

AND 

JOHN  S.  PATTON,  Librarian 


UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 
1909 


COPYRIGHT,  1909 
BY  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 


THE  MICHIB  COMPANY,  PRI> 
CHARLOTTESVILLB,  VA. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE ,:     1 

II.  IN  THE  JEFFERSON  SOCIETY    .     .  5 

III.  IN  THE  CHAPEL 11 

IV.  IN  CABELL  HALL:   THE  RAVENS  15 
V.  IN  MADISON  HALL 34 

VI.  IN  CABELL  HALL,  AGAIN      .     .  100 

VII.  IN  No.  13  WEST  RANGE    ...  186 

VIII.  IN  THE  MINDS  OF  MEN  191 


443383 


EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

"  I  "HE  University  of  Virginia  has  nothing 
•*•  with  which  to  reproach  herself  in  her 
treatment  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Through  ill 
report  and  good  he  was  followed  with  her  ma- 
ternal solicitude  and  misgivings,  but  never  with 
her  reproof  or  wrath.  In  his  college  days  she 
may  have  been  too  lenient,  but  in  the  days  of 
his  fame  she  is  not  constrained  by  any  hobgob- 
lin of  consistency  to  withhold  her  praise.  She 
has,  therefore,  had  peculiar  pride  in  witnessing 
his  universal  acclaim  as  a  man  of  genius  and  as 
a  singularly  forceful  agency  in  compelling  in- 
ternational recognition  of  our  American  liter- 
ature. Her  anxiety  is  no  longer  lest  he  be  not 
recognized  at  his  real  worth,  but  lest,  in  the 
ardor  of  revived  enthusiasm,  his  real  merit, 
however  high,  be  overrated  and  his  rightful 
place,  so  tardily  won,  jeopardized  by  claims  too 
sweeping  and  superlative. 


2  POE  CENTENARY 

The  celebration  of  the  Foe  centenary  at  the 
University  of  Virginia  has  served,  however,  as 
a  corrective:  first,  of  the  persistent  misstate- 
ments  of  his  earlier  biographers,  and  then  of 
the  unsettled  or  adverse  judgment  of  his  liter- 
ary rank. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  entered  the  University  on 
the  fourteenth  of  February,  1826,  and  did  not 
leave  until  the  twentieth  of  December.  By  the 
way,  the  many  errors  and  uncertainties  as  to 
Poe's  stay  at  the  University  are  due  to  a  mis- 
understanding of  the  period  covered  by  the 
session  of  1826.  It  began  on  the  first  of 
February  and  continued  without  break  or  holi- 
day to  the  fifteenth  of  December,  so  that  in- 
stead of  leaving  during  the  session,  as  has 
been  asserted  in  various  forms  of  ignorance  or 
malignity,  he  was  in  the  University  from  two 
weeks  after  the  session  opened  until  five  days 
after  the  session  closed.  Nor  was  he  dis- 
ciplined by  suspension,  expulsion,  personal 
reprimand,  or  in  any  other  way  during  that 
long  session.  He  did  fall  once  under  suspicion 
of  misconduct,  but  in  that  particular  case  was 
innocent. 

His  career  was  not  entirely  calm  and  placid 


POE  CENTENARY  3 

in  that  stormy  session,  but  notwithstanding 
alleged  irregularities  he  was  commended  for 
Italian  translation,  reported  among  the 
"passed"  in  Latin  and  French,  and,  in  addition, 
was  known  to  the  librarian  as  a  free  reader  of 
good  books,  to  his  fellow-students  as  a  gifted 
author  of  undergraduate  tales'  never  published, 
and  probably  of  poems  afterwards  published 
in  the  volume  of  1827.  Among  those  who 
applauded  his  achievements,  yet  deplored  the 
errancies  of  his  later  life,  were  his  brother 
alumni;  and  in  that  small  company  of  sincere 
mourners  who  followed  his  storm-tossed  and 
wrecked  body  to  its  humble  grave  were  repre- 
sentatives of  his  alma  mater. 

When  the  semi-centennial  of  his  death 
came,  the  University  of  Virginia  unveiled,  with 
services  so  significant  as  to  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  the  cultivated  world,  the  Zolnay  bust 
of  Poe,  the  most  striking  and  satisfactory 
artistic  representation  of  the  poet  extant.* 
Through  this  successful  and  significant  celebra- 
tion the  University  of  Virginia's  connection 

*There  were  then  but  two  monuments  to  Poe: 
his  tombstone  in  Baltimore  and  the  Actors'  Monu- 
ment in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  New  York. 


4  POE  CENTENARY 

with  Poe  became  so  widely  known  that  as  the 
centennial  of  his  birth  approached,  it  was 
taken  for  granted  by  the  foreign  and  domestic 
press  that  the  supreme  appreciation  of  this 
noted  event  would  be  shown  at  this  University. 
That  these  high  expectations  might  not  be 
disappointed,  the  President  of  the  University 
of  Virginia  appointed  a  committee  to  provide 
for  some  adequate  recognition  of  the  cente- 
nary. The  committee,  consisting  of  Charles 
W.  Kent,  James  A.  Harrison,  and  William  H. 
Faulkner,  with  the  hearty  support  of  the 
Faculty,  students,  community,  and  especially 
the  President,  arranged  the  programme  set 
forth  in  this  volume  officially  sanctioned. 

In  this  book  no  record  can  be  made  of  the 
brilliancy  or  enthusiasm  of  the  audiences,  no 
representation  of  the  spectacular  features  of 
the  entertainment,  but  the  substantial  contribu- 
tions to  Poe  criticism  and  the  distinct  acknowl- 
edgement of  Poe's  far-sweeping  fame  are  here 
presented  to  the  public  with  grateful  thanks  to 
all  who  by  participation  or  presence  did  honor 
to  Poe's  memory,  and  with  a  solemn  sense  of 
chastened  but  lasting  joy  that  our  great 
alumnus  has  at  last  come  so  fully  to  his  own. 


II 

IN  THE  JEFFERSON  SOCIETY 

HP*  HE  Jefferson  Literary  Society  was  estab- 
-^  lished  in  the  early  months  of  the  session 
of  1825,  and  Poe  became  a  member  in  1826. 
The  first  public  event  of  the  centenary  was  a 
celebration  by  this  Society  on  the  evening  of 
the  16th.  Interest  in  the  occasion  and  the  spe- 
cial programme  drew  many  to  the  Jefferson 
Hall  in  spite  of  the  prevailing  severe  snow 
storm.  The  programme,  arranged  by  students 
to  do  honor  to  their  famous  predecessor, 
expressed  well  the  attitude  of  the  student  body 
to  him.  The  committee  on  programme  was 
Paul  Micou,  chairman;  L.  M.  Robinette,  O. 
R.  Easley,  G.  F.  Zimmer,  and  A.  B.  Hutzler. 
Mr.  Paul  Micou  presided  and  welcomed  the 
audience,  promising  that  none  of  the  speakers 
would  attempt  elaborate  criticism  of  the  poet's 
life  and  works.  The  place  of  oratorical  trib- 
utes and  dramatic  recital  of  poems  would  be 

5 


6  POE  CENTENARY 

taken  by  simple  descriptions  of  Poe's  life  at  the 
University,  the  student  activities  in  his  day  and 
the  founding  of  the  Society. 

Mr.  H.  H.  Thurlow,  of  New  York,  gave  the 
necessary  setting  for  the  programme  in  a  short 
sketch  of  the  poet's  life,  not  omitting  the 
pathetic  story  of  his  varying  fortunes  in  the 
several  cities  in  which  he  sojourned. 

The  Washington  Literary  Society  had  been 
invited  to  take  part  in  the  programme,  and  Mr. 
DeRoy  R.  Fonville,  of  North  Carolina,  was 
present  as  its  delegate.  Mr.  Fonville,  whose 
theme  was  "The  Pathos  in  the  Lives  of  Our 
Southern  Poets,"  pictured  the  pitiful  struggles 
that  had  so  large  a  share  in  the  lives  of  Lanier, 
Hayne  and  Timrod,  reaching  in  Poe's  life  the 
climax  of  his  story.  The  courage  and  dignity 
of  these  gifted  men  in  the  midst  of  the  sore 
perplexities  of  their  artistic  lives  received 
sympathetic  treatment. 

The  natural  pride  of  the  Jefferson  Society  in 
having  had  Poe  as  a  member  suggested  the 
theme  for  Mr.  W.  P.  Powell,  of  Virginia— 
"Poe  and  the  Jefferson  Literary  Society."  Mr. 
Powell  told  his  audience  that  the  life  of  the 
Jefferson  Society  has  been  almost  co-equal  with 


POE  CENTENARY  7 

that  of  the  University,  if  we  date  the  institution 
from  the  beginning  of  its  first  session,  and  that 
the  poet  was  an  active  member,  and,  for  at  least 
one  meeting,  temporary  secretary.  He  seems 
to  have  addressed  the  Society  only  once,  and 
then  his  theme  was  "Heat  and  Cold."  Mr. 
Powell  drew  some  legitimate  inferences  as  to 
Poe's  sociability  from  the  fact  of  his  member- 
ship in  the  "Jeff." 

Many  interesting  anecdotes  and  curious  facts 
about  the  poet's  University  year  were  told  by 
Mr.  A.  B.  Hutzler,  of  Virginia.  In  the  course 
of  his  address  on  "Poe  at  the  University  of 
Virginia,"  he  pointed  out  that  despite  the  law- 
lessness of  that  session  Edgar  Poe  appeared 
on  the  minute-book  of  the  faculty  but  once,  and 
that  in  that  case  it  was  merely  to  give  testi- 
mony in  an  affair  about  which  he  proved  to 
be  ignorant.  His  evident  literary  and  artistic 
gifts  were  shown  even  then  by  his  story-telling 
to  friends  gathered  at  the  fireside  in  No.  13, 
and  the  decoration  of  his  dormitory  with 
crayon  copies  of  scenes  that  had  caught  his 
fancy.  In  a  few  words  he  rehearsed  the  facts 
which  have  convinced  investigators  that  No. 
13  West  Range  is  the  room  that  Poe  occupied 


8  POE  CENTENARY 

after  leaving  West  Lawn,  where  he  was  first 
domiciled  as  a  student. 

Mr.  J.  Y.  McDonald,  of  West  Virginia,  fol- 
lowed with  an  address  full  of  humorous  stories 
of  "Student  Life  at  the  University  in  1826," 
the  year  of  Poe's  residence.  He  kept  his  au- 
dience amused  with  story  after  story  taken 
from  faculty  minute-books  of  the  almost 
daily  trials  for  violating  the  strict  rules 
prescribing  apparel,  food,  amusements,  and 
conduct  of  the  students.  It  was  hard  for  the 
students  in  his  audience  to  realize,  as  ever 
existing  at  the  University,  such  conditions  as 
those  record-books  and  the  statutes  of  the 
time  record  with  grave  formality.  One  fact 
of  interest  pointed  out  by  Mr.  McDonald  was 
the  close  personal  touch  that  Mr.  Jefferson 
maintained  with  the  students  of  his  Uni- 
versity. The  disorders  of  1826,  due  to 
boyish  revolt  against  the  prevailing  conditions, 
were  graphically  described. 

Not  less  entertaining  or  full  of  quaint  details 
was  the  address  of  Mr.  A.  G.  Gilmer,  of 
Virginia,  on  "How  the  Faculty  Fared  in 
1826."  That  their  lines  had  not  fallen  to  them 
in  places  entirely  pleasant  was  very  evident,  for 


POE  CENTENARY  9 

something  like  twenty-five  expulsions  from  a 
student  body  of  five  times  that  number  pointed 
to  a  great  deal  of  disorder  and  probably  to 
much  that  was  radically  wrong  with  the  system 
under  which  student  self-government  was  first 
attempted.  Mr.  Jefferson  planned  a  student 
tribunal  to  try  all  cases  of  misconduct,  but  no 
student  would  serve  on  that  court  and  the 
faculty  was  forced  to  another  method.  Im- 
mediate success  was  not  achieved,  but  ulti- 
mately there  came  about  a  mutual  respect  and 
forbearance,  which  solved  the  hard  problem 
of  discipline  for  all  time.  The  attempt  to 
procure  the  entire  faculty  (with  a  single  ex- 
ception) from  abroad  was  discussed  at  some 
length,  and  the  characteristics  of  the  importa- 
tions were  well  described. 

Mr.  S.  M.  Cleveland,  of  Virginia,  closed  the 
exercises  by  an  interesting  analysis  of  the 
poems  which  he  believed  Poe  had  written  while 
at  the  University.  These  were  "Tamerlane," 
"Dreams,"  "Visit  of  the  Dead,"  "Evening 
Star,"  "Imitation,"  "In  Youth  I  Have  Known 
One,"  "A  Wandering  Being  from  My  Birth," 
"The  Happiest  Day,"  and  "The  Lake."  The 
discussion  as  to  whether  these  poems  were 


10  POE  CENTENARY 

written  at  the  University  was  ingenious  and 
interesting,  if  not  convincing.  Their  general 
atmosphere  and  message  were  discussed  with 
rare  insight  and  critical  interpretation.  Mr. 
Cleveland  drew  a  comparison  between  "Tam- 
erlane" as  first  published  and  the  polished 
poem  that  appeared  later  in  Poe's  life,  and 
showed  that,  though  greatly  improved  in  form, 
the  underlying  spirit  was  the  same. 


Ill 

IN  THE  CHAPEL 

SUNDAY  evening  Dr.  William  A.  Barr, 
of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Lynchburg,  Va., 
preached  in  the  University  Chapel  on  the  text 
"Whosoever  would  become  great  among  you 
shall  be  your  servant,"  his  thesis  being  that  a 
man  is  great  in  proportion  to  his  loyalty  to  his 
highest  visions.  He  made  the  following 
reference  to  Poe : 

I  believe  that  the  true  Poe  was  an  example 
of  the  very  kind  of  greatness  I  have  described. 
The  possession  of  genius  alone  does  not  make 
men  great.  It  is  the  character  back  of  genius. 
And  Poe  was  consecrated  through  all  his  life 
to  his  vision  of  beauty  and  truth.  He  held  to 
it  with  a  tenacity  that  would  not  be  daunted 
and  much  of  the  apparent  vagabondage  may  be 
of  the  kind  that  Christ  enjoined  upon  his  first 
disciples  when  he  told  them  that  if  one  city 
11 


12  POE  CENTENARY 

would  not  receive  them,  to  shake  its  dust  from 
their  feet  and  go  to  another.  But  after  all, 
wherein  consists  Poe's  great  moral  delin- 
quency? From  all  that  is  known  of  his  life 
and  work  he  was  pure  as  the  snow,  and  may 
well  stand  as  a  rebuke  to  the  modern  literary 
horde  who  appear  to  suppose  that  to  be  inter- 
esting they  must  be  salacious.  Then  as  to  his 
relations  in  life,  whether  as  ward,  as  husband, 
or  as  son  to  the  mother  of  his  beautiful 
Annabel  Lee,  he  appears  to  have  fulfilled  these 
relations  with  tenderness,  fidelity  and  love.  If 
it  be  true  that  he  had  an  infirmity  of  temper, 
it  is  also  true  that  some  of  the  most  illustrious 
saints  in  history  have  spent  their  lives  in  a 
struggle  with  the  same  infirmity.  And  so  at 
last  his  moral  delinquency  seems  to  be  reduced 
to  a  single  failing  and  this  but  on  occasions 
when  he  indulged  too  freely  in  the  cup. 
According,  however,  to  his  own  explanation, 
this  was  the  result  of  a  nervous  condition  into 
which  his  constitution  at  times  fell.  It  is  fair 
to  accept  his  explanation  in  the  light  of  the 
modern  view  that  this  failing  is  at  times  the 
result  of  disease  and  for  this  to  give  him  our 
compassion. 


POE  CENTENARY  13 

We  have  a  pen  picture  of  Poe  by  N.  P. 
Willis,  in  whose  employ  he  spent  a  number  of 
months.  It  concludes  with  these  words: 
"Through  all  this  considerable  period  we  had 
seen  but  one  presentment  of  the  man :  a  quiet, 
patient,  industrious  and  most  gentlemanly  per- 
son, commanding  the  utmost  respect  and  good 
feeling  by  his  unvarying  deportment  and 
ability." 

I  submit  that  a  man  who  could  have  appeared 
to  Mr.  Willis  day  after  day  and  month  after 
month  in  this  light  could  not  have  been  so 
bad.  And  yet  we  are  obliged  to  admit  an 
unspeakable  pathos  in  his  short  and  checkered 
life  and  above  all  in  its  end.  Whether,  as  has 
been  maintained,  he  was  drugged,  or  whether 
found  in  a  helpless  condition  through  his  own 
failing,  it  is  unspeakably  sad  that  this  fine 
genius  should  have  been  used  by  a  set  of 
political  thugs  and  left  to  die  like  a  dog. 

In  looking  back  upon  Poe's  career,  I  recall 
the  words  of  Carlyle,  written  with  reference  to 
the  poet  Burns : 

"Alas,  his  sun  shone  as  through  a  tropical 
tornado ;  and  the  pale  shadow  of  Death  eclipsed 
it  at  noon!  Shrouded  in  such  baleful  vapors, 


14  POE  CENTENARY 

the  genius  of  Bums  was  never  seen  in  clear 
azure  splendor,  enlightening  the  world.  But 
some  beams  from  it  did,  by  fits,  pierce  through ; 
and  it  tinted  those  clouds  with  rainbow  and 
orient  colours  into  a  glory  and  stern  grandeur, 
which  men  silently  gazed  on  with  wonder  and 
tears." 


IV 
IN  CABELL  HALL— THE  RAVENS 

"  I  "HE  Raven  Society,  in  its  celebration  of 
•*•  the  Poe  centenary,  endeavored  to  empha- 
size primarily  Poe's  life  and  influence  from 
the  viewpoint  of  the  poet's  alma  mater. 

The  speaker  of  the  evening  was  an  alumnus 
of  the  University,  the  poems  were  by  alumni, 
and  the  evening  was  closed  by  a  sketch  of 
Poe's  connection  with  the  University  of  Vir- 
ginia, illustrated  by  a  set  of  stereopticon  views. 

Mr.  H.  H.  Freeman,  organist  and  choir- 
master of  St.  John's  Church,  Washington, 
D.  C.,  was  in  charge  of  the  music  programme. 
A  very  fitting  beginning  was  his  rendition  of 
Chopin's  "Marche  Funebre"  as  a  memorial  to 
the  great  poet. 

Mrs.  Charles  Hancock  sang  Oliver  King's 
arrangement  of  "Israfel." 

Professor  Willoughby  Reade,  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  English  and  Elocution  in  the  Episcopal 

15 


16  POE  CENTENARY 

High  School,  near  Alexandria,  Virginia,  re- 
cited "The  Raven"  and  "The  Bells." 

In  interpretation  of  Poe's  purpose  in  writing 
"The  Raven,"  Mr.  Reade  said : 

It  was  with  great  pleasure,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, that  I  accepted  the  invitation  of  the 
Raven  Society  to  take  part  in  its  exercises 
to-night. "  To  others,  however,  I  shall  leave  it 
to  pronounce  encomiums  on  the  genius  of  the 
man  whose  centennial  we  are  here  met  to  com- 
memorate, and  shall  pass  at  once  to  the  reading 
of  his  greatest  poem. 

I  hold  it  to  be  a  hopeless  task  to  give  an 
acceptable  reading  of  a  piece  of  literature 
which  one  does  not  understand,  or  in  which 
one  sees  no  more  than  lies  on  the  printed  page. 
And  so  I  offer  you,  before  I  read  the  poem,  my 
interpretation  of  "The  Raven."  It  may  not  be 
the  correct  one — I  do  not  claim  that — but  it 
is  the  poem  as  I  see  and  feel  it. 

Many  theories  have  been  advanced  in  at- 
tempts to  prove  why  Poe  wrote  "The  Raven." 
Most  of  us  are  familiar  with  the  explanation 
which  the  author  himself  gives  of  its  origin. 
He  says  that  he  sat  down  and  composed  it 
deliberately — as  he  might  have  played  a  game 


POE  CENTENARY  17 

of  chess — that  it  was  a  poem  of  the  mind  rather 
than  of  the  heart;  a  statement  which  even  his 
most  ardent  admirers  can  hardly  credit,  know- 
ing, as  they  do,  his  dislike  for  poetry  made  by 
rule.  Indeed,  it  has  been  stated  that  he  after- 
ward said  that  this  explanation  was  but  a  hoax ! 
To  say  that  it  is  a  mere  jingle  of  rhymes  is 
folly :  no  man  ever  wrote  such  a  poem  as  this 
without  meaning  something.  Published  two 
years  before  the  death  of  his  wife,  it  could 
not,  as  some  who  are  not  careful  as  to  dates 
have  said,  have  been  inspired  by  her  loss. 

I  believe  that  he  wrote  the  poem  because  he 
could  not  help  writing  it;  and,  that  we  might 
not  read  his  heart's  dearest  secrets,  he  hides 
this  cry  of  his  soul  in  the  wonderful  diction, 
the  haunting  rhyme  and  rhythm,  and  the  vague 
mystery  of  this  remarkable  composition.  At 
the  time  it  was  written,  Poe  had  travelled  far 
on  the  downward  road.  The  spirit  of  hope- 
lessness had  taken  up  its  abode  in  his  heart. 
All  his  nobler  feelings,  however,  were  not 
dead,  and  although  he  seemed  to  realize  that 
this  life  held  but  little  of  good  for  him,  there 
was  still,  deep  in  his  heart,  a  hope  of  some- 
thing better  in  the  hereafter. 


18  POE  CENTENARY 

What  is  this  "ancient,  grim,  and  ghastly 
raven"  but  the  spirit  of  evil  which  has  entered 
the  soul  of  this  unhappy  man — the  spirit  of 
Remorse,  of  Despair?  It  is  never  to  leave 
him  again — the  bird  itself  tells  him  that  this 
is  the  case  in  reply  to  his  statement,  "On  the 
morrow  he  will  leave  me."  Near  the  close  of 
the  poem  he  tries  to  drive  it  away,  but  the 
effort  is  a  useless  one,  the  last  line  tells  us  that. 

And  what  is  this  "lost  Lenore"  but  his  own 
lost  life?  Never  again  on  earth  will  he  find 
it  young  and  pure  as  once  it  was,  but  what  of 
the  hereafter — ay,  the  hereafter  ?  Summoning 
all  his  courage,  he  asks  of  this  evil  spirit  the 
great  question  which  every  human  being  asks 
at  some  time  in  his  life,  "Is  there,  is  there  balm 
in  Gilead?"  Is  there  any  hope  in  the  here- 
after ?  Driven  almost  to  madness  by  the  bitter 
negation,  he  asks  a  second  question: 

"Tell  this   soul  with   sorrow  laden   if.   within   the 

distant  Aidenn, 
It  shall  clasp  a  sainted  maiden — " 

and  when  the  same  mocking  "Nevermore" 
falls  upon  his  ear,  see  how  all  his  nobler 
feelings  assert  themselves,  how  strong  his 


POE  CENTENARY  19 

belief  in  God,  in  something  better  beyond  this 
life,  as  he  exclaims : 

"Leave  no  black  plume  as  a  token  of  that  lie  thy 
soul  hath  spoken." 

O  mighty  genius !  O  blasted  life !  O  weary 
heart  in  darkness  struggling!  God  show  thee 
mercy  in  the  day  of  thy  judgment,  and  for 
thy  faith  grant  thee  "surcease  of  sorrow"  in 
"that  distant  Aidenn"  where,  clasping  again 
thy  pure  young  life,  thou  shalt  know  the  heal- 
ing of  that  balm  of  Gilead,  and  where  thy  soul 
shall  be  forever  lifted  from  the  shadow  of  that 
"Nevermore." 

Dr.  James  Southall  Wilson  (M.  A.,  1905), 
professor  of  History  in  William  and  Mary, 
read  his  poem 

"WHOSE  HEART-STRINGS  ARE  A  LUTE" 

[January  19,  1809— October  7,  1849.] 

The  angel  Israfel 
Sang  no  more  in  Heaven: 

Silent  he  lay  in  Hell 
'Neath  the  Hash  of  the  forked  levin: 


20  POE  CENTENARY 

Mute  were  the  strings  of  his  lyre 
By  one  great  discord  shattered; 

Seared  by  the  heat  of  the  fire, 
And  the  tones  of  their  melody  scattered. 

Where  the  fallen  angels  dwell, 
Burnt  by  the  forked  red  levin, 

The  angel  Israfel 
Sang  no  more  of  Heaven. 

When  the  last  mad  swirl  of  the  wild  red  flame 

Died  from  the  darkening  sky, 
And  Hell  burnt  scarlet  with  Heaven's  shame 

Purged  from  the  realms  on  high ; 
In  Heaven,  mute  was  the  sweetest  lute ; 

Silent  the  holy  choir; 
The  lyre,  the  viol,  or  the  lute 

Would  never  a  note  suspire: 
For  deep  in  Hell  was  Israfel, 

And  voiceless  was  his  lyre. 

The  rivers  of  God,  flowing  silently  on, 

Never  a  melody  sang; 

And  the  breezes  of  Heaven  that  brought  in 
the  dawn 

Ghostlike  in  dumbness  upsprang. 
A  sadness  fell  on  the  seraphim  there, 


POE  CENTENARY  21 

Watching  the  great  white  throne, 
And  they  longed  for  the  passion  of  praise  and 

prayer 

Israfel's  lyre  had  known; 
But  they  offered  a  prayer  to  the  God  of  the 

Air, 
Bowed  to  the  great  white  throne. 

"Oh  grant  us  in  pity,  great  Father  of  Love, 

Israfel  pardoned  of  wrong, 
Whose  lyre  caught  the  breezes  of  Heaven,  and 

wove 

Marvelous  mazes  of  song; 
Till  one  little  rift  in  his  lute  crept  in, 

Marring  his  musical  wire : 
Shall  the  whole  heart  be  shattered  for  one 

lone  sin? 

Grant  us  again  his  lyre!" 
And  the  Lord  God  heard  and  gave  them  his 

word, 
"Purged  he  shall  be  with  fire." 

And  into  the  frame  of  a  man  there  came 

(This  was  the  purging  of  fire) 
The  soul  of  Israfel  out  of  the  flame, 

Israfel,  lord  of  the  lyre; 


22  POE  CENTENARY 

To  fight  the  battle  of  evil  and  good, 

Bound  in  the  body  of  man ; 
For  the  Lord  who  had  suffered  and  died  on 
the  rood 

Knew  what  suffering  can. 
So  out  of  Hell  came  Israfel, 

Angel  and  devil  and  man. 

Then  the  soul  of  the  music  within  him  awoke ; 

Longings  moved  in  his  breast; 
And  the  chains  that  had  bound  him  in  Hell  he 
broke, 

Strong  with  his  soul's  unrest ; 
And  his  man's  hand  smote,  from  his  angel 
lute 

All  the  anguish  of  Hell: 
Till  the  hosts  of  Heaven  and  earth  grew  mute 

Hearing  Israfel. 
But  the  demon  within  still  urged  him  to  sin 

After  the  manner  of  Hell. 

And  some  men  saw  the  demon,  and  cried, 

"Cast  this  devil  hence!" 
And  some  men,  seeing  his  angel  side, 

Pleaded  his  innocence; 
But  the  good  Lord,  hearing  the  song  divine, 


POE  CENTENARY  23 

V 

Spake  unto  his  choir, 
"The  soul  of  Israfel  is  mine; 

Love  hath  tuned  his  lyre." 
And   the  chilly  breath   of   God's   messenger, 
Death, 

Stilled  the  strings  of  the  lyre. 

For  the  angel  and  devil  had  fought  a  fight 

Close  in  the  breast  of  man, 
And  the  angel  had  won  by  his  music's  might 

(This  was  the  good  Lord's  plan)  ; 
And  the  soul  of  him  passed  like  a  holy  strain 

Tunefully  up  on  high, 
But  the  human  heart  of  him  woke  again 

Marvelous  melody; 
Ay,  the  soul  of  him  passed  like  a  living  blast 

Musically  up  to  the  sky. 

The  angel  Israfel 
Sings  evermore  in  Heaven, 

Pleading  for  them  in  Hell 
Burned  by  the  forked  levin; 

Pleading  for  them  below, 
Sinful  souls  and  straying, 

Till  all  the  Heaven  shall  know 
The  passion  of  his  playing. 


24  POE  CENTENARY 

Where  the  sinless  angels  dwell 
Around  the  great  white  throne, 

The  angel  Israfel 
Sings  evermore  in  Heaven. 

Dr.  Edward  Reinhold  Rogers,  headmaster 
of  The  Jefferson  School  for  Boys,  Charlottes- 
ville,  read  his  tribute 

To  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

The  orchestra  of  Life  once  played 

Soul  music  of  a  mortal  man, 
Whose  joys  and  tears,  whose  hopes  and  fears 
The  sounding  strings  intoned  and  made 

Their  strange  symphonic  plan. 

Wild  music  rose  to  greet  the  ears 

Of  those  who  listening  passed  along, 
For  moans  of  pain  in  sad  refrain 

Were  mingled  with  the  voice  of  tears 
In  melancholy  song: 

The  bitter  cry  of  hope  in  vain, 

Discordant  jars  of  wasted  youth, 
The  deep  despair  of  baffled  prayer, 
Ambition's  agony  of  pain, 
Portrayed  in  sounding  truth. 


POE  CENTENARY  25 

So  harsh  the  discord  in  the  air, 

To  some  who  stood  too  near; 

But  lost  and  drowned  in  grosser  sound 

A  voice  was  singing,  pure  and  rare, 

In  flute-like  beauty  clear. 

Its  song  was  genius  glory-crowned, 
The  song  of  Beauty,  radiant,  fine, 
The  golden  heart,  the  perfect  art, 

Of  him  whose  spirit  truly  found 
The  path  to  things  divine. 

Life's  orchestra  plays  o'er  the  part; 

And  we  who  hear  the  score  today 
By  God's  own  will  may  listen  still 
As  discords  die  by  His  own  art, 

And  Beauty  holds  full  sway. 

Hnvoi 

Thy  years  of  grief  and  bitterness  are  past, 
No  longer  toll  the  bells  in  sorrow's  strain; 
But  merrily  and  cheerily 

In  glad  refrain 
The  silver  bells  ring  worldwide  praise  at  last. 


26  POE  CENTENARY 

Dr.  Herbert  M.  Nash  (M.  D.,  1852),  of 
Norfolk,  Va.,  was  the  speaker  of  the  evening. 
Dr.  Nash's  remarks  were  of  peculiar  interest 
since  he  was  the  only  speaker  during  the  Cen- 
tenary who  had  known  Poe  personally.  Poe, 
not  long  before  his  death,  was  visiting  a  family 
in  Norfolk,  at  whose  home  Dr.  Nash  was  a 
frequent  visitor. 

Dr.  Nash  said : 

Little  did  I  think  that  the  visits  I  was  pay- 
ing to  a  beautiful,  rosy  cheeked,  and  golden 
haired  girl  of  sixteen,  who  lived  in  my  neigh- 
borhood some  fifty  years  ago,  would  eventuate 
in  my  appearance  here  this  evening,  on  the  eve 
of  the  centenary  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

Professor  Kent,  who  seems  to  absorb  and 
appropriate  information  of  all  sorts,  and  to 
make  use  of  it  to  suit  himself,  seems  to  have 
learned  in  some  way,  I  know  not  how,  that 
I  had  been  personally  acquainted  with  the  poet. 
He  probably  communicated  this  information  to 
the  president  of  the  Raven  Society,  and  a  few 
days  ago,  I  received  an  invitation  from  that 
gentleman,  backed  by  a  very  persuasive  note 
from  Dr.  Kent  himself,  to  be  present  on  this 


POE  CENTENARY  27 

occasion  and  to  address  you  upon  my  reminis- 
cence of  Poe. 

Now  I  had  determined  before  the  receipt  of 
the  invitation  to  be  here  if  possible,  not  to  take 
an  active  part  in  the  celebration  of  his  cen- 
tenary, but  only  as  a  looker  on,  and  to  enjoy 
what  should  be  said  by  those  more  competent 
than  myself  to  do  honor  to  the  memory  of  that 
wonderful  man. 

Had  the  subject  to  be  discussed  been  a 
medical  one,  I  could  not  have  excused  myself 
for  not  complying  with  a  request  for  an  ad- 
dress; but  to  enter  at  so  late  a  day  upon  a 
field  so  entirely  new  to  myself  required  my 
sense  of  duty  to  my  alma  mater  to  be  pricked 
to  the  very  quick,  that  I  might  even  attempt 
to  say  a  few  words  here  to-night  as  to  the 
impressions  made  upon  my  youthful  nature 
by  the  impressive  countenance,  the  dignified 
yet  cordial  manner,  the  cadence  of  the  voice, 
and  the  pressure  of  the  hand  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe. 

It  was  in  September,  1849,  that  fortune 
threw  me  into  his  presence.  The  poet  visited 
Norfolk,  then  a  comparatively  small  city,  to 
deliver  his  celebrated  lecture  on  "The  Poetic 


28  POE  CENTENARY 

Principle;"  and  while  there  was  the  guest  of 
Mrs.  Susan  Maxwell,  whose  daughter  Helen, 
was  the  attractive  nymph  before  referred  to, 
whom  I  often  found  it  convenient  to  visit 
and  to  engage  with  in  the  then  popular  game 
of  checkers. 

So  here  I  met  and  was  introduced  to  the 
distinguished  visitor  and  had  the  privilege  of 
listening  to  his  interesting  conversation  and 
of  hearing  him  recite  some  of  his  favorite 
poems,  among  them  "The  Raven,"  "The  Bells," 
and  "Annabel  Lee." 

I  was  also  present  upon  the  occasion  of  Poe's 
lecture  delivered  at  the  Norfolk  Academy,  to 
a  very  fair  and  delighted  audience,  and  was 
much  impressed  by  the  artistic  rendering  of 
his  selections. 

There  was  nothing  that  I  observed  in  the 
poet's  appearance  that  indicated  excessive 
gloominess  or  sadness.  There  was  an  air  of 
dignified  repose,  which  lightened,  when  speak- 
ing to  one,  into  a  pleasing  smile.  But  the 
expression  changed  quickly  and  varied  with 
the  theme  that  engaged  him.  I  did  not  notice 
the  least  awkwardness  in  his  demeanor. 

I  trust  I  have  not  thus  far  described  an 


POE  CENTENARY  29 

imaginary  Poe,  and  that  my  recollection  of 
him  on  that  occasion  is  essentially  correct. 

I  have  since  then  met  with  but  one  person 
who  reminded  me,  in  person,  manner  and 
bearing,  of  Poe,  and  that  was  the  late  Dr. 
Marion  Sims,  whose  face  was  somewhat 
broader,  but  who  was  as  inventive  in  another 
field,  and  as  distinguished  in  his  chosen  pro- 
fession, as  was  Poe  in  the  domain  of  literature. 

In  enumerating  the  studies  of  Poe,  while  a 
student  in  this  University,  stress  has  been  laid 
upon  his  extraordinary  proficiency  in  the  lan- 
guages; but  I  have  suspected,  from  the  readi- 
ness he  evinced  in  the  solution  of  the  enigmas 
and  curious  problems  submitted  to  him,  that 
either  he  must  have  been  almost  as  familiar 
with  the  calculus  of  probabilities  as  the  great 
La  Place  himself,  or  that  he  was  the  most 
ingenious  guesser  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  dwell  upon  the  poet's 
genius,  which  has  been  analyzed  and  so  justly 
praised  here  by  Mr.  Mabie  on  a  former  happy 
occasion,  and  which  has  been  written  of  every- 
where that  his  matchless  creations  have  been 
read  and  felt;  nor  of  his  contemporaries  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  which  were  legion,  in 


30  POE  CENTENARY 

every  branch  of  human  thought,  and  of  every 
degree  of  fame  in  science,  in  speculative 
thought,  in  art  and  literature. 

Now,  what  must  have  been  the  energetic 
interaction  of  the  cells  of  his  amazing  brain 
when  engaged  in  the  invention  of  his  marvel- 
ous tales  and  his  unique  verses?  Like  a  vol- 
cano in  action,  throwing  out  fire  and  smoke, 
light  and  darkness,  the  weird  phenomenon  at- 
tended by  the  very  quaking  of  the  earth 
around;  so  that  great  brain,  and  body  little 
more  than  frail,  so  buffeted  by  the  rude  fortune 
that  seemed  almost  inseparable  from  his  per- 
sonality, his  alter  ego,  must  have  quailed  at 
times  under  the  stress  of  his  efforts. 

It  is  confidently  asserted  that  Poe  never 
wrote  a  line  while  under  the  influence  of  alco- 
holic stimulants;  on  the  contrary,  when  so 
influenced,  he  was  sick  almost  unto  death !  No 
impurity  stains  his  record. 

Byron  has  written, 

"Man's  love  is  of  man's  life  a  thing  apart; 
Tis  woman's  whole  existence." 

But    Poe's    love   was    distinctly   feminine    in 


POE  CENTENARY  31 

nature,  not  to  be  thrown  off  as  an  outer  gar- 
ment. It  was  true. 

I  may  be  pardoned  in  taking  a  physician's 
view  of  his  not  infrequent  mental  states.  In 
my  humble  opinion,  Poe  at  such  times  was  the 
victim  of  an  abnormal  psychology.  There  are 
conditions  known  as  the  psycho-neuroses  of 
exhaustion,  during  which  there  is  a  more  or 
less  complete  paralysis  of  the  will. 

Attacks  may  ensue  similar  to,  but  not  iden- 
tical with,  epileptic  mania.  We  know  that  even 
hysteria  is  sometimes  characterized  by  a  dis- 
sociation of  consciousness. 

Prof.  Janet  has  defined  dipsomania  as  "in 
reality  a  crisis  of  depression  in  which  the  sub- 
ject feels  the  need  of  being  excited  by  means 
of  a  poison,  the  effect  of  which  he  knows  only 
too  well;  by  alcohol." 

But  Poe  was  certainly  no  dipsomaniac.  As 
a  medical  man,  I  have  seen  cases  analogous 
to  his,  though  none  possessing  even  an  ap- 
proach to  his  scintillating  intellect. 

They  were  not  drunkards,  in  the  usual  ac- 
ceptance of  the  term.  They,  also,  were  the 
victims  of  psycho-neuroses,  morbid,  irresistible 
impulsions. 


32  POE  CENTENARY 

Mr.  Neff  then  introduced  Dr.  Charles  W. 
Kent,  who,  in  calling  attention  to  the  interest 
attaching  to  Poe's  connection  with  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia,  stated  that,  while  it  was 
true  that  Poe  had  not  made  any  direct  refer- 
ences to  his  alma  mater,  it  was  also  true  that 
a  number  of  his  earlier  poems  were  in 
all  probability  either  prepared  or  revised  at 
the  University  of  Virginia  and  that  he  cer- 
tainly cultivated  during  his  session  here  the 
art  of  short-story  writing.  Perhaps,  too,  he 
was  influenced  by  the  surroundings,  as  well 
he  might  have  been  by  the  new  and  strange 
life  of  the  young  institution.  Such  thoughts 
as  these  made  pictorial  representations  of 
the  time  in  which  Poe  lived  at  the  University 
of  especial  interest.  Following  these  general 
introductory  remarks,  ten  or  a  dozen  views 
of  the  early  University  and  the  men  con- 
nected with  its  history  were  thrown  on  the 
screen  and  explained  one  by  one.  Among 
them  were  pictures  of  Dr.  Dunglison,  who 
was  chairman  of  the  faculty  during  Poe's  ses- 
sion; Madison,  Monroe  and  General  Cocke, 
members  of  the  Board  of  Visitors,  before 
whom  the  young  poet  must  have  stood  his 


POE  CENTENARY  33 

final  oral  examinations ;  the  Rotunda  and  Lawn 
in  the  early  days ;  the  exterior  and  interior  of 
No.  13  West  Range,  where  Poe  roomed  the 
greater  part  of  the  session  he  spent  at  the 
University,  and  the  Colonnade  clubhouse, 
which  was  in  those  days  the  Library;  Wil- 
liam Wertenbaker,  the  librarian  appointed  by 
Mr.  Jefferson,  and  a  scene  from  the  Ragged 
Mountains. 

Mr.  H.  H.  Freeman,  organist  and  choir- 
master of  St.  John's  Church,  Washington, 
D.  C.,  played  during  the  evening  Chopin's 
Funeral  March  from  the  G  minor  Sonata,  ar- 
ranged for  the  organ*  by  Sir  John  Stainer; 
Bohm's  Staccato  in  D  flat,  arranged  for  the 
organ  by  Mr.  Freeman;  Lemare's  Andantino 
in  D  flat,  and  Schubert's  Military  March  in  D 
major,  arranged  for  the  organ  by  W.  T.  Best. 

*The  organ  in  Cabell  Hall,  the  gift  of  Mr.  Andrew 
Carnegie,  was  built  by  Skinner.  It  is  of  the  electro- 
pneumatic  action  type,  and  is  played  from  a  console 
of  four  keyboards. 


IN   MADISON   HALL 

AT  11  o'clock  Tuesday  morning,  the  one 
*"*•  hundredth  anniversary  of  Poe's  birth, 
Dr.  Charles  W.  Kent  presided  at  commem- 
orative exercises  held  in  Madison  Hall,  whose 
special  purpose  was  to  offer  an  opportunity 
for  a  study  of  Poe's  influence  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  own  country.  Dr.  Kent  ad- 
dressed the  assemblage: 

We  have  assembled  this  morning  for  the 
purpose  of  doing  further  honor  to  the  memory 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  On  Saturday  evening 
the  Jefferson  Literary  Society  of  which  he  was 
a  member  recalled  his  close  connection  with 
the  student  life  of  the  University  of  Virginia 
by  reviving  the  story  of  Poe's  University  resi- 
dence and  his  connection  with  our  literary  ac- 
tivities ;  on  Sunday  evening  some  of  us  had  the 
privilege  of  hearing  from  the  distinguished 
clergyman  who  occupied  our  Chapel  pulpit  his 

34 


POE  CENTENARY  35 

gracious  and  grateful  tribute  to  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  and  his  plea  for  a  right  judgment  of  his 
failures  and  foibles. 

On  last  evening  the  Raven  Society  enter- 
tained us  thoroughly  by  a  unique  celebration 
of  Poe's  interest  as  a  man  and  gifts  as  an 
artist. 

While  the  University  of  Virginia  lays  claim 
to  her  distinguished  son  to  whom,  at  all  times, 
through  good  report  and  ill,  she  has  been  loyal 
and  kindly,  she  recognizes  that  he  cannot  be 
confined  within  the  narrow  compass  of  her 
encircling  care.  When  he  passed  from  these 
walls  into  the  outer  world  he  committed  him- 
self to  the  judgment,  too  often  tardy  and 
grudging,  of  his  American  countrymen.  His 
recognition,  however,  has  now  past  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  University,  his  Southland,  and 
even  his  entire  country  and  his  fame  has  ex- 
tended throughout  all  of  the  nations  of  Western 
Europe  and  even  to  the  more  remote  lands  of 
the  Orient.  In  recognition  of  the  universality 
of  his  fame  and  the  cosmopolitanism  of  his 
literary  genius  we  have  chosen  at  this  morning 
meeting  to  remind  ourselves  and  you  of  his 
appreciation  abroad.  That  this  may  be  rightly 
set  before  you,  we  have  invited  distinguished 


36  POE  CENTENARY 

speakers  representing  other  languages  and 
other  civilizations  and  have  great  satisfaction 
in  believing  that  their  testimony  will  convince 
even  the  most  sceptical  among  you  of  the  true 
worth  and  increasing  fame  of  the  University's 
most  distinguished  son. 

Dr.  William  Harrison  Faulkner  read  letters 
from  distinguished  men  in  England,  France 
and  Germany.  A  letter  from  Richard  Dehmel 
of  Hamburg,  a  German  poet  of  distinction, 
contained  this  tribute: — 

Von  Entdeckungen  und  Abenteuern 
War  des  Herz  Amerikas  geschwellt, 
Da  entlad  es  sich  mit  wilden  Feuern, 
Und  ein  Dichter  ward  zum  ungeheuern 
Krater  einer  innern  neuen  Welt — 

which  Dr.  James  Taft  Hatfield  of  North- 
western University  instantly  rendered  into 
English  and  read,  as  follows: 

From  its  endless  quest  and  eager  faring 
Burned  the  new  world's  heart,  too  strained 

and  tense: 

Forth  it  flamed,  all  older  barriers  tearing, 
And  a  poet  came  to  be  the  daring 

Crater  of  his  land's  new  wakened  sense. 


POE  CENTENARY  37 

Other  poems  contributed  for  the  occasion  were : 

Arthur     Christopher     Benson,     Tremans, 
Horsted  Keynes,  Sussex : 

EDGAR  AI^AN  POE 

Singer,  whose  song  was  as  the  ray 

That  doth  the  rifted  cloudland  part, 
Too  rarely  heard,  the  magic  lay 

That  flowed  from  thy  o'er-brimming  heart ! 
And  if  thy  fantasy  beguiled 

With  darkest  fears  man's  darker  fate, 
Not  as  a  laughter-loving  child 

Thou  didst  thy  soul  interrogate. 
What  stain  of  strife,  what  dust  of  fight 

Unequal,  soiled  that  radiant  brow? 
Made  one  with  life,  and  truth,  and  light, 

Thou  hast  thy  joyful  answer  now! 


449333 


38  POE  CENTENARY 

Mr.  John  Boyd,  Montreal,  Canada: 

Wild  child  of  genius  with  his  witching  lyre, 

Dreamer  of  dreams  of  rarest  fantasy, 
Upon  the  earth  he  flashed  with  meteor  fire, 

And  in  his  wake  rolled  waves  of  melody, 
Seraphic  songs  as  if  from  Heaven's  choir, 

With  elfin  music,  weird  and  mystical, 
Bewitching  notes  that  golden  thoughts  inspire, 

Angelic  strains,  divinely  musical. 
All  praise  be  his  on  this  his  natal  day, 

May  all  his  faults  and  frailties  be  forgot, 
Lay  laurels  on  his  tomb  and  honors  pay, 

Think  only  of  the  glory  that  he  wrought, 
Hail,  sister  nation,  for  thy  great  son's  sake, 

A    kindred    soul    to    Keats,    and    Burns, 
and  Blake. 


POE  CENTENARY  39 

Dr.     Edward     Dowden,     Trinity    College, 
Dublin  : 

Seeker  for  Eldorado,  magic  land 

Whose   gold   is   beauty,  fine   spun,   amber 

clear, 

Over  what  moon-mountain,  down  what  val- 
ley of  fear, 

By  what  lone  waters  fringed  with  pallid  sand 
Did  thy   foot   falter?     Say,   what   airs   have 

fann'd 
Thy  fevered  brow,  blown  from  no  terrene 

sphere, 
What  rustling  wings,  what  echoes  thrilled 

thine  ear 

From  mighty  tombs  whose  brazen  ports  ex- 
pand? 

Seeker,  who  never  quite  attained,  yet  caught, 
Moulded  and  fashioned,  as  by  strictest  law, 
The  rainbow's  moon-mist  and  the  flying 

gleam 

To  mortal  loveliness,  for  pity  or  for  awe 
To   us    what   carven    dreams   thy   hand    has 

brought, 
Dreams  with  the  serried  logic  of  a  dream! 


40  POE  CENTENARY 

Dr.  Casar  Flaischlen,  Berlin: 
LIED  DES  LEBENS 

Friih  am  Morgan 

Sturm  und  Wolken, 

Sonne  dann  und  blauer  Himmel 

Mittag  prachtig  Hoh  und  Hag. 

Schmetterlinge, 
Bliihende  Rosen 
Schwalbenlieder 
Finkenschlag 

Still  nun  wird  es  rings  und  stiller. 
Miide  fallt  am  Mast  die  Fahne, 
Licht  und  Lust  ist 
Am  Erblassen. 

Schmetterling — und  Lied — verlassen 

Liegen  einsam 

Hoh  und  Hag. 

Und  in  Abend — 

Lautlos  leiser 

Dammerung  zerrinnt  der  Tag. 


POE  CENTENARY  41 

The  Chairman,  Dr.  Kent: 

In  no  country  has  Poe  been  so  appreciated 
and  so  distinctly  flattered  by  sincere  imitation 
as  in  France.  The  development  of  the  short- 
story,  which  has  reached  such  a  marked  degree 
of  excellence  both  in  France  and  America,  has 
its  common  starting  point  in  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
This  influence  was  transmitted  to  France 
through  the  translations  of  Baudelaire,  and 
from  this  day  to  ours  the  influence  of  Poe, 
both  in  poetry  and  prose,  has  been  consciously 
felt  by  the  artists  of  our  sister  republic.  Un- 
able because  of  distance  to  summon  to  our  aid 
a  speaker  from  fair  France,  we  have  been 
singularly  fortunate  in  procuring  as  her  rep- 
resentative on  this  occasion  Dr.  Alcee  Fortier 
of  Tulane  University,  designated  by  one  of 
his  colleagues  as  our  "Prince  of  Creoles."  I 
have  the  honor  to  introduce  Dr.  Fortier  who 
will  speak  to  you  in  the  language  counted  by 
him  and  his  compatriots  as  la  plus  belle  langue 
du  monde. 

Dr.    Fortier : 

Je  suis  heureux  de  me  trouver  parmi  vous 
aujourd'hui  pour  prendre  part  a  la  celebration 


42  POE  CENTENARY 

du  centenaire  de  la  naissance  d'Edgar  Allan 
Poe.  C'est  ici  meme  que  Ton  doit  celebrer  cet 
evenement  avec  le  plus  d'eclat,  a  cette  grande 
Universite  de  la  Virginie,  ou  le  celebre  ecrivain 
commenga  sa  carriere  litteraire.  Ici  vecut  Poe, 
ici  il  fut  etudiant,  ici  il  fut  inspire  par  1'atmos- 
phere  vivifiante  de  la  magnifique  institution 
fondee  par  Jefferson.  Le  nom  de  1'auteur  du 
"Corbeau,"  de  "la  Chute  de  la  Maison  d'Usher" 
et  autres  histoires  admirables,  est  indissoluble- 
ment  lie  a  celui  de  1'Universite  de  la  Virginie, 
et  le  nom  de  1'Universite  a  celui  de  Poe. 

L'etudiant  doit  une  grande  reconnaissance 
au  college  qui  lui  a  donne  la  vie  intellectuelle, 
mais  le  college,  a  son  tour,  ne  doit  pas  oublier 
1'ancien  eleve  qui,  par  son  genie,  a  contribue 
a  illustrer  son  alma  mater.  Je  sais  bien  que 
cette  Universite  serait  arrivee  a  la  celebrite 
sans  1'aide  d'Edgar  Poe,  mais  celui-ci  a  grande- 
ment  ajoute  a  la  gloire  de  1'institution,  et  il  est 
eminemment  juste  qu'elle  se  souvienne  du  poete 
et  qu'elle  1'honore.  En  agissant  ainsi  1'Uni- 
versite represente  aussi  le  grand  etat  de  la 
Virginie  qu'  aimait  tant  Poe,  et  dont  1'ad- 
mirable  civilisation  exerga  sur  lui  une  si  grande 
influence  que,  malgre  ses  egarements,  il  lui 


POE  CENTENARY  43 

resta  toujours  dans  Tame  1'amour  du  beau  et 
du  vrai. 

Nous  ne  pouvons  admettre  qu'un  homme 
soit  jamais  vraiment  grand,  s'il  lui  manque  la 
grandeur  morale,  et  une  institution  d'enseigne- 
ment  superieur  ne  donnera  pas  cet  homme  en 
exemple,  quelque  vaste  que  soit  son  genie. 
Edgar  Poe  fut  plus  malheureux  que  coupa- 
ble,  et  nous  qui  admirons  ses  belles  qualites 
mentales,  lui  pardonnons  ses  fautes,  parce 
qu'il  aima  1'art,  parce  qu'il  ne  ternit  jamais  un 
nom  de  femme  dans  ses  vers  ni  dans  sa  prose, 
et  parce  qu'il  etudia  Tame  humaine  et  tacha 
d'en  comprendre  les  mysteres.  Telle  est  1'opin- 
ion  qu'ont  de  lui  les  professeurs  de  1'Univer- 
site  de  la  Virginie,  qui  ont  fait  une  etude  ap- 
profondie  de  ses  oeuvres  litteraires  et  de  sa 
vie  malheureuse.  Telle  est  1'opinion  de  M. 
le  Docteur  James  A.  Harrison,  qui  a  ecrit  la 
biographic  la  plus  complete  et  la  plus  sym- 
pathique  du  poete;  telle  est  1'opinion  de  M. 
le  Docteur  Charles  W.  Kent,  qui  a  si  bien  com- 
pris  le  genie  de  Poe;  telle  est  1'opinion  enfin 
de  1'eminent  President  de  cette  Universite,  dont 
le  gout  litteraire  est  si  fin  et  si  parfait.  C'est 
parce  que  ces  messieurs  savent  qu'Edgar  Poe 


44  POE  CENTENARY 

ne  fut  pas  le  miserable,  que  nous  presente  une 
deplorable  legende,  qu'ils  honorent  au- 
jourd'hui  sa  memoire  et  nous  ont  invites  a 
1'honorer  avec  eux. 

L'Universite  de  la  Virginie  est  fiere  du  plus 
illustre  homme  de  lettres  parmi  ses  anciens 
eleves,  elle  lui  sait  gre  de  la  gloire  qu'il  a  don- 
nee  a  elle,  a  1'etat  de  la  Virginie,  et  aux  Etats- 
Unis.  Pendant  de  longues  annees,  apres  que 
notre  pays  eut  acquis  son  independance,  il 
n'etait  connu  en  Europe  que  par  ses  institu- 
tions politiques,  et  par  son  merveilleux  devel- 
oppement  industriel  et  commercial.  A  peine 
quelques  noms  d'ecrivains  avaient  traverse 
1'Ocean  et  etaient  mentionnes  de  temps  en 
temps,  mais  lorsque  le  Corbeau  de  Poe  eut 
croasse  son  immortelle  complainte,  que  le 
Scarabee  d'Or  eut  scintilla  dans  la  nuit,  et  qu' 
eurent  paru  les  formes  etherees  de  Morella  et 
de  Ligeia,  on  sut  dans  la  vieille  Europe  que 
la  jeune  republique  occidentale  avait  donne 
naissance  a  un  vrai  poete,  a  un  prosateur  ex- 
quis.  De  tous  les  ecrivains  americains  Edgar 
Poe  est  le  plus  connu  en  Europe.  II  est  le 
seul  qui  fasse,  pour  ainsi  dire,  partie  de  la  lit- 
terature  franchise,  qui  soit  reellement  fran- 


POE  CENTENARY  45 

rise,  comme  1'a  si  bien  dit  Emile  Hennequin. 
Voyons  done  quelle  est  la  genese  de  cette  ex- 
traordinaire popularite. 

Des  1841,  peu  apres  la  publication  du 
"Double  Assassinat  dans  la  Rue  Morgue," 
M.  le  Docteur  James  A.  Harrison  nous  dit  que 
trois  journaux  de  Paris  s'approprierent  et  se 
disputerent  ce  conte  etrange  de  ratiocination. 
Ce  qui  commenga,  cependant,  la  reputation  de 
Poe  en  France  fut  un  article  de  E.  D.  Forgues, 
public  dans  "la  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes"  du 
15  octobre,  1846,  "les  Contes  d'Edgar  A. 
Poe."  M.  Forgues  commence  son  article  par 
une  comparaison  entre  "1'Essai  Philosophique 
sur  les  Probabilites"  de  Laplace  et  le  systeme 
de  Poe.  II  dit  que  les  contes  de  1'auteur  amer- 
icain  ont  une  parente  evidente  avec  la  philoso- 
phic de  Laplace,  quoiqu'  ils  ne  conduisent  pas 
a  un  aussi  noble  but  et  n'emanent  pas  d'une 
pensee  aussi  vigoureuse.  La  faculte  inspira- 
trice  de  Poe,  c'est  le  raisonnement ;  sa  muse, 
c'est  la  logique,  son  moyen  d'agir  sur  les  lect- 
eurs,  c'est  le  doute.  "L'auteur  met  aux  prises 
Oedipe  et  le  sphinx,  le  heros  et  un  logogriphe." 
Le  mystere  parait  impenetrable,  1'intelligence 
s'irrite  contre  le  voile  etendu  devant  elle,  mais 


46  POE  CENTENARY 

sort  victorieuse  de  la  lutte  apres  des  travaux 
extraordinaires. 

"Monos  et  Una,"  d'apres  M.  Forgnes,  est 
une  monographic  patiente,  methodique,  sci- 
entifique,  sur  la  fraternite  du  sommeil  et  de 
la  mort.  La  logique  de  Poe  ne  devie  que  rare- 
ment  les  principes  une  fois  poses;  elle  est 
claire  et  intelligible,  et  s'empare  du  lecteur 
malgre  lui.  C'est  sans  nul  doute,  a  mon  avis, 
cette  logique  impeccable,  cette  clarte,  malgre 
1'obscurite  apparente,  que  Ton  trouve  dans  les 
contes  de  Poe,  qui  le  rendirent  si  populaire 
en  France,  car  ce  sont  les  traits  caracteristiques 
de  1'esprit  frangais.  Les  grands  ecrivains  de 
la  France  reconnurent  en  Poe  une  affinite  lit- 
teraire  et  lui  donnerent  droit  de  cite  parmi  eux. 

M.  Forgues  ne  se  contente  pas,  cependant, 
de  presenter  le  logicien  a  ses  compatriotes ;  il 
veut  aussi  leur  faire  voir  le  poete,  1'inventeur 
de  fantaisies  sans  but,  et  il  fait  1'analyse  du 
"Chat  Noir"  et  de  "l'Homme  des  Foules."  II 
prefere  les  quelques  pages  de  certains  contes 
de  Poe  a  de  longs  volumes,  et  comprend  le 
merite  du  conte,  ce  genre  ou  Ton  "condense," 
dit-il,  "en  peu  de  mots  sous  forme  de  recit, 
toute  une  theorie  abstraite,  tous  les  elements 


POE  CENTENARY  47 

d'une  composition  originate."  M.  Forgues  ne 
veut  pas  etablir  un  parallele  en  regie  entre 
1'auteur  americain  et  les  feuilletonistes  mod- 
ernes,  mais,  dit-il,  "il  sera  opportun  et  utile 
de  les  comparer  quand  le  temps  aura  conso- 
lide  la  reputation  naissante  du  conteur  etran- 
ger,  et — qui  sait? — ebranle  quelque  peu  celle 
de  nos  romanciers  feconds."  Le  critique  fran- 
cais  de  1846  etait  prophete:  les  nombreux 
volumes  d'Alexandre  Dumas,  quoiqu'ils  in- 
teressent  encore  les  jeunes  gens  de  vingt  ans, 
ne  font  presque  plus  partie  de  la  litterature, 
tandis  que  les  contes  de  Poe  sont  des  joyaux 
litteraires,  dont  1'eclat  augmente;  a  mesure'que 
s'ecoulent  les  annees. 

L/article  de  M.  Forgues  attira  Tattention  de 
Mme.  Gabrielle  Meunier,  qui  traduisit  quel- 
ques-uns  des  contes  de  Poe.  Ce  grand 
ecrivain,  neanmoins,  serait  reste  presque  in- 
connu  en  France,  s'il  n'avait  trouve  en  Charles 
Baudelaire  une  affinite  litteraire  extraordinaire 
et  un  traducteur  merveilleux.  On  n'avait  rien 
vu  de  pareil  en  France  aux  contes  de  Poe, 
malgre  la  concision  et  la  clarte  caracteris- 
tiques  du  style  frangais,  si  ce  n'etait  "la  Venus 
d'llle"  de  Merimee,  publiee  en  1837.  Aussi  la 


48  POE  CENTENARY 

traduction  de  Baudelaire  en  1848,  et  ensuite  en 
1856,  des  "Histoires  Extraordinaires"  eut-elle 
un  immense  succes.  Le  traducteur  consacra 
a  Tauteur  americain  une  notice  sympathique  et 
eclairee,  et  quoiqu'il  n'eut  pas  les  documents 
qui  exonerent  le  poete  des  calomnies  de  Gris- 
wold  il  le  defend  centre  son  biographe 
malveillant.  II  dit  qu'Edgar  Poe  et  sa  patrie 
n'etaient  pas  de  niveau,  et  il  ajoute  que  Poe 
avait  "une  delicatesse  exquise  de  sens  qu'une 
note  fausse  torturait,  une  finesse  de  gout  que 
tout  excepte  1'exacte  proportion,  revoltait,  un 
amour  insatiable  du  Beau,  qui  avait  pris  la 
puissance  d'une  passion  morbide."  II  etait 
certainement  impossible  que  Poe  put  etre  bien 
compris  par  ses  compatriotes  de  la  premiere 
moitie  du  XIXe  siecle. 

Baudelaire  raconte  la  vie  de  Poe,  nous 
presente  son  portrait  physique  et  moral  et  fait 
de  lui  un  magnifique  eloge  que  nous  citons  tout 
,entier.  "Ce  n'est  pas  par  ses  miracles 
materiels,  qui  pourtant  ont  fait  sa  renommee 
qu'il  lui  sera  donne  de  conquerir  1'admiration 
des  gens  qui  pensent,  c'est  par  son  amour  du 
Beau,  par  sa  connaissance  des  conditions  har- 
moniques  de  la  beaute,  par  sa  poesie  profonde 


POE  CENTENARY  49 

et  plaintive,  ouvragee  neanmoins,  transparente 
et  correcte  comme  un  bijou  de  cristal — par  son 
admirable  style,  pur  et  bizarre, — serre  comme 
les  mailles  d'une  Armure, — complaisant  et 
minutieux, — et  dont  la  plus  legere  intention 
sert  a  pousser  doucement  le  lecteur  vers  un  but 
voulu, — et  enfin  surtout  par  ce  genie  tout 
special,  par  ce  temperament  unique  qui  lui  a 
permis  de  peindre  et  d'expliquer,  d'une 
maniere  impeccable,  saisissante,  I'exception 
dans  I'ordre  moral. — Diderot,  pour  prendre  un 
exemple  entre  cent,  est  un  auteur  sanguin ;  Poe 
est  1'ecrivain  des  nerfs,  et  meme  de  quelque 
chose  de  plus, — et  le  meilleur  que  je  con- 
naisse."  "Quelquefois,  des  echappees  mag- 
nifiques,  gorgees  de  lumieres  et  de  couleur, 
s'ouvrent  soudainement  dans  ses  paysages,  et 
Ton  voit  apparaitre  au  fond  de  leurs  horizons 
des  villes  orientales  et  des  architectures, 
vapor  isees  par  la  distance,  ou  le  soleil  jette  des 
pluies  d'or." 

Dans  cette  appreciation  de  son  auteur  favori 
Baudelaire  s'eleve  a  la  hauteur  de  son  modele 
comme  prosateur,  et  nous  verrons  bientot 
qu'il  1'egale  presque  comme  poete.  Je  ne  sais 
reellement  si  1'Edgar  Poe  frangais  n'est  pas 


50  POE  CENTENARY 

superieur  au  Poe  de  langue  anglaise.  Ecoutez 
1'admirable  traduction  de  Baudelaire: 

"Les  annees,  les  annees  peuvent  passer  mais 
le  souvenir  de  cet  instant — jamais!  Ah!  les 
fleurs  et  la  vigne  n'etaient  pas  choses  incon- 
nues  pour  moi — mais  1'aconit  et  le  cypres 
m'ombragerent  nuit  et  jour.  Et  je  perdis  tout 
sentiment  du  temps  et  des  lieux,  et  les  etoiles 
de  ma  destinee  disparurent  du  ciel,  et  des  lors 
la  terre  devint  tenebreuse,  et  toutes  les  figures 
terrestres  passerent  pres  de  moi  comme  des 
ombres  voltigeantes,  et  parmi  elles  je  n'en 
voyais  qu'une — Morella!  Les  vents  du  firma- 
ments ne  soupiraient  qu'un  son  a  mes  oreilles, 
et  le  clapotement  de  la  mer  murmurait  in- 
cessamment ;  'Morella !'  Mais  elle  mourut,  et  de 
mes  propres  mains  je  la  portai  a  sa  tombe,  et 
je  ris  d'un  amer  et  long  rire,  quand,  dans  le 
caveau  ou  je  deposai  la  seconde,  je  ne 
decouvris  aucune  trace  de  la  premiere — 
Morella." 

En  1857  Baudelaire  publia  "les  Nouvelles 
Histoires  Extraordinaires ;"  en  1858,  "les 
Aventures  d' Arthur  Gordon  Pym;"  en  1864, 
"Eureka,"  et  en  1865,  "les  Histoires 
Grotesques  et  Serieuses."  Ces  traductions 


POE  CENTENARY  51 

sont  dignes  des  premieres  et  naturaliserent  en 
France  les  contes  et  les  nouvelles  de  Poe. 
"Les  Petits  Poemes  en  Prose"  de  Baudelaire 
furent,  sans  mil  doute,  comme  beaucoup  de 
ses  vers,  inspires  par  Poe.  On  y  voit  des 
etudes  etranges  et  I'amour  de  1'art,  mais  on 
voit  souvent  aussi  dans  la  prose  et  dans  les  vers 
de  Baudelaire,  des  grossieretes  de  langage  et 
des  impuretes  de  pensee  qu'on  ne  trouve  jamais 
dans  Poe.  On  ne  peut,  cependant,  qu'  admirer 
"1'Etranger,"  a  la  premiere  page  des  "Petits 
Poemes  en  Prose."  On  y  trouve  le  sentiment 
poetique  de  Poe : 

"Qui  aimes-tu  le  mieux,  homme  enigma- 
tique,  dis?  ton  pere,  ta  mere,  ta  soeur  ou  ton 
frere?" 

"Je  n'ai  ni  pere,  ni  mere,  ni  soeur,  ni  frere." 

"Les  amis?" 

"Vous  vous  servez  la  d'une  parole  dont  le 
sens  m'est  reste  jusqu'a  ce  jour  inconnu." 

"Ta  patrie?" 

"J'ignore  sous  quelle  latitude  elle  est 
situee." 

"La  beaute?" 

"Je  1'aimerais  volontiers,  deesse  et  im- 
mortelle." 


52  POE  CENTENARY 

"L'or?" 

"Je  le  hais  comme  vous  haiissez  Dieu." 

"Eh !  qu'aimes-tu  done,  extraordinaire 
etranger  ?" 

"J'aime  les  nuages — les  nuages  qui  passent 
....la  has.... les  merveilleux  nuages!" 

"Le  Vieux  Saltimbanque"  est  un  portrait 
tel  qu'aurait  pu  le  dessiner  Poe,  un  portrait 
implacable  de  verite,  ou  cependant  la  sympathie 
pour  les  vaincus  de  la  vie  se  mele  au  senti- 
ment d'horreur  que  fait  eprouver  la  vue 
d'un  vieil  homme  voute,  caduc,  decrepit. 
Nous  reviendrons  a  1'influence  de  Poe  sur 
Baudelaire  poete.  Poe  le  prosateur  attira 
1'attention  de  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  et  cet 
etrange  ecrivain  consacra  a  1'auteur  americain 
plusieurs  articles,  entre  1853  et  1883.  II  ne 
lui  est  pas  aussi  sympathique  que  Baudelaire, 
mais  il  reconnait  sa  volonte  extraordinaire, 
et  1'appelle  "le  plus  energique  des  artistes 
volontaires."  II  dit  que  Poe  "se  sert  d'une 
analyse  inouiie  et  qu'il  pousse  a  la  fatigue 
supreme,  a  1'aide  d'on  ne  sait  quel  prodigieux 
miscroscope  sur  la  pulpe  meme  du  cerveau." 
....  "Positivement  le  lecteur  assiste  a 
1' operation  du  chirurgien;  positivement,  il 


POE  CENTENARY  53 

entend  crier  1'acier  de  1'instrument  et  sent 
les  douleurs." 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly  ne  connut  d'abord 
Poe  que  par  sa  biographic  par  Baudelaire. 
II  le  jugea  moins  severement,  lorsqu'il  cut 
lu  la  vie  que  joignit  Emile  Hennequin  a  sa 
traduction  des  "Contes  Grotesques."  II  lui 
donna  alors  "la  Royaute  des  hommes  de 
genie  malheureux." 

Revenons  maintenant  a  Baudelaire  et  a 
Poe,  et  voyons  ce  que  Theophile  Gautier  a 
dit  d'eux.  Nous  ne  doutons  aucunement 
que  Poe  n'ait  eu  une  certaine  influence  sur 
Gautier,  le  poete  de  "Tart  pour  1'art,"  et  sur 
son  ecole.  II  est  probable  que  les  contes  de 
Poe  ont  inspire  "la  Morte  Amoureuse," 
"le  Roman  de  la  Momie,"  et  "Spirite." 
Baudelaire  avait  dedie  ses  extraordinaires 
"Fleurs  du  Mai"  a  Gautier,  et  celui-ci  ecrivit 
une  notice  sur  1'auteur  du  livre  dans  laquelle 
il  fit  une  fine  analyse  du  genie  de  Baudelaire 
et  de  celui  de  Poe.  II  dit  qu'au-dessus  de 
rimmonde  fourmillement  de  misere,  delai- 
deur  et  de  perversite  que  presentent  souvent 
"les  Fleurs  du  Mai,"  "loin,  bien  loin  dans  Tin- 
alterable  azur,  flotte  1'admirable  fantome  de 


54  POE  CENTENARY 

la  Beatrix,  1'ideal  tou jours  desire,  jamais 
atteint,  la  beaute  superieure  et  divine  incarnee 
sous  une  forme  de  femme  etheree,  spiritualisee, 
faite  de  lumiere,  de  flamme  et  de  parfum,  une 
vapeur,  un  reve,  un  reflet  du  monde  aromal 
et  seraphique  comme  les  Ligeia,  les  Morella, 
les  Una,  les  Eleonore  d'Edgar  Poe  et  la  Sera- 
phita-Seraphitus  de  Balzac,  cette  etonnante 
creation." 

Gautier  appelle  Poe  "un  singulier  genie 
d'une  individuality  si  rare,  si  tranchee,  si  ex- 
ceptionnelle."  II  dit  qu'en  France  le  nom  de 
Baudelaire  est  inseparable  de  celui  de  Poe,  et 
que  le  souvenir  de  1'un  eveille  immediatement 
la  pensee  de  1'autre.  "II  semble  meme  par- 
fois,"  ajoute-t-il,  "que  les  idees  de  1'Ameri- 
cain  appartiennent  en  propre  au  Frangais." 
Une  des  histoires  les  plus  fortes  de  Poe  est 
"le  Chat  Noir,"  qui  nous  terrific,  lorsqu'il  ap- 
parait  "avec  sa  gueule  rouge  et  son  oeil  unique 
flamboyant."  Baudelaire  ecrivit  trois  poemes 
sur  les  chats  et  dit  d'eux : 

Us  prennent  en  songeant  les  nobles  attitudes 
Des  grands  sphinx  allonges  au  fond  des  soli- 
tudes, 
Qui  semblent  s'endormir  dans  un  reve  sans  fin ; 


POE  CENTENARY  55 

LJeurs    reins    feconds   sont  pleins    d'etincelles 

magiques, 

Et   des  parcelles   d'or  ainsi   qu'un   sable  fin, 
Etoilent  vaguement  leurs  prunelles  mystiques. 

On  voit  Edgar  Poe  dans  les  plus  beaux 
poemes  de  Baudelaire,  dans  "Don  Juan  aux 
Enfers,"  dans  "les  Petites  Vieilles,"  dans  "le 
Soleil,"  et  surtout  dans  "le  Mort  Joyeux," 
qui  n'est  qu'une  autre  forme  du  "Ver  Con- 
querant,"  de  Poe,  et  que  nous  citerons  en 
entier,  malgre  1'horreur  du  sujet,  pour  faire 
voir  I'affinite  litteraire  et  mentale  vraiment 
extraordinaire  des  deux  poetes. 

Dans  une  terre  grasse  et  pleine  d'escargots 
Je  veux  creuser  moi-meme  une  fosse  pro- 

fonde, 

Ou  je  puisse  a  loisir  etaler  mer  vieux  os 
Et  dormir  dans  1'oubli  comme  un  requin 
dans  1'onde. 

Je  hais  les  testaments  et  je  hais  les  tombeaux; 

Plutot  que  d'implorer  une  larme  du  monde, 
Vivant,  j'aimerais  mieux  inviter  les  corbeaux 

A  saigner  tous  les  bouts  de  ma  carcasse 
immonde. 


6  POE  CENTENARY 

)  vers!  noirs  compagnons  sans  oreille  et  sans 

yeux, 

foyez  venir  a  vous  un  mort  libre  et  joyeux! 
'hilosophes  viveurs,  fils  de  la  pourriture. 

^  travers  ma  ruine  allez  done  sans  remords, 
tt  dites-moi  s'il  est  encore  quelque  torture 
'our  ce  vieux  corps  sans  ame  et  mort  parmi 
les  morts! 

"William  Wilson,"  ou  Edgar  Poe  se  de- 
louble  d'une  maniere  si  etonnante,  a  du  plaire 
nfiniment  a  Baudelaire,  ainsi  que  1'admirable 
'Chute  de  la  Maison  d'Usher,"  ou  le  senti- 
nent  de  la  terreur  est  si  intense.  Baudelaire 
.  du  rever  bien  souvent  a  Eleonora,  qu'il  eut 
roulu  suivre  dans  la  vallee  du  Gazon  Diapre, 
>u  "les  fleurs  etoilees  s'etaient  abimees  dans 
e  tronc  des  arbres;  ou  avaient  deperi  les 
isphodeles  d'un  rouge  de  rubis,"  qu'avaient 
•emplacees  "les  sombres  violettes,  semblables  a 
les  yeux  qui  se  convulsaient  peniblement  et 
egorgeaient  toujours  de  larmes  de  rosee;"  d'ou 
'le  volumineux  nuage  retombe  dans  les  regions 
1'  Hesperus  avait  emporte  le  spectacle  infini 
le  sa  pourpre  et  de  sa  magnificence."  Ces 


POE  CENTENARY  57 

admirables  phrases  de  Poe  sont  rendues  en 
frangais  par  son  traducteur  avec  une  exacti- 
tude saisissante,  un  sens  poetique  extraordi- 
naire. 

^'influence  de  Poe  le  conteur  se  fait  voir 
dans  Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam,  Paul  Hervieu, 
Henri  de  Regnier;  dans  Guy  de  Maupassant, 
qui  l'egale  dans  "le  Horla"  et  autres  oeuvres 
d'un  realisme  intense;  dans  Jules  Verne,  qui 
imite  ses  romans  scientifiques,  comme  "Hans 
Pfaal,"  ou  ses  aventures  de  voyage,  comme 
"Gordon  Pym,"  dans  Gaboriau,  dont  le  M. 
Lecoq  est  frere  de  Legrand  et  de  Dupin;  dans 
Jean  Richepin,  dont  "les  Morts  Bizarres," 
sont  imitees  directement  des  contes  de  Poe, 
ou  celui-ci  fait  une  etude  si  extraordinaire  et 
si  poignante  de  la  mort.  "Le  Disseque"  de 
Richepin  nous  rapelle  "le  Cas  de  M.  Wald- 
emar,"  et  Peru,  1'etudiant  en  medecine,  nous 
interesse  presque  autant  que  les  personnages 
les  plus  sombres  de  Poe.  II  veut  prendre  la 
matiere  en  flagrant  delit  de  pensee.  "II  suffi- 
rait  d'arriver  a  ceci,"  dit  Peru,  "analyser,  dis- 
sequer,  tenir  sous  ses  doigts  un  cerveau  pen- 
sant.  Evidemment  on  saisirait  la  pensee, 
on  la  sentirait,  on  la  toucherait,  comme  on 


58  POE  CENTENARY 

saisit,  comme  on  sent,  comme  on  touche  un 
phenomena  electrique,  par  exemple."  Pour 
esperer  une  telle  possibilite,  Peru  veut  dis- 
sequer  des  hommes  vivants.  II  tuerait  des 
hommes  pour  le  bien  des  hommes.  A  la  fin 
de  la  Commune,  dans  la  cuisine  de  la  cremerie 
borgne,  "le  Rendez-vous  des  Affames,"  un 
corps  tombe  a  travers  une  marquise  en  verre. 
C'est  Peru,  1'etudiant  en  medecine.  On  se 
baisse  pour  le  relever,  mais  on  est  saisi  par 
une  epouvantable  horreur,  "le  malheureux 
ivait  la  poitrine  depouillee,  les  chairs  a  vif,  et 
cela  non  pas  par  1'effet  du  verre,  mais  par 
mite  d'une  operation.  II  etait  disseque."  II 
s'etait  disseque,  veut  dire  1'auteur. 

Le  ler  mai  1886  "la  Revue  des  Deux  Mon- 
ies" publia  un  article  tres  interessant  sur  "les 
Poetes  Americains,"  par  Th.  Bentzon  (Mme. 
Blanc),  qui  visita  les  Etats-Unis  il  y  a  quel- 
^ues  annees,  et  fit  un  sympathique  portrait  de 
la  femme  americaine.  Mme.  Blanc  dit  que 
Poe  "restera  inimitable,  quelque  effort  que 
fassent  pour  approcher  de  lui  les  exploiteurs 
iu  macabre  grotesque  ou  larmoyant."  Elle 
lit  que  le  poete  americain  adorait  le  beau 
:omme  Heine  et  "qu'il  voyait  sa  supreme  ex- 


POE  CENTENARY  59 

pression  dans  la  tristesse  que  nous  cause  le  mal 
de  la  vie  et  notre  incapacite  a  saisir  Tinconnu." 

Mentionnons  encore  d'autres  articles  pub- 
lies  dans  "la  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes:"  Un 
par  T.  de  Wyzewa,  le  15  octobre  1894,  et  deux 
en  1897  par  Arvede  Barine  (Mme.  Georges 
Vincens).  M.  de  Wyzewa  dit  des  vers  de 
Poe:  "Us  sont  les  plus  magnifiques,  a  mon 
gre,  de  tous  ceux  qui  existent  dans  la  langue 
anglaise.  Ce  sont  des  chefs-d'oeuvre  d'emo- 
tion  et  de  musique:  a  eux  seuls,  ils  suffiraient 
pour  la  gloire  d'un  ecrivain."  M.  de  Wyzewa 
ajoute  qu'il  "a  inaugure  en  outre  une  dizaine 
au  moins  de  genres  litteraires  tout  autres,  dont 
chacun  a  ete  ensuite  largement  exploite." 

Les  articles  d' Arvede  Barine  ont  pour  titre, 
"Essais  de  Literature  Pathologique."  Ils  ne 
nous  plaisent  pas  autant  que  le  livre  de  M. 
Emile  Lauvriere,  public  en  1904,  "Edgar  Poe, 
sa  vie  et  son  Oeuvre,  Etude  de  Psychologic 
Pathologique."  Voila  1'ouvrage  le  plus  com- 
plet  sur  Poe  qui  ait  paru  en  France.  L'auteur 
consacre  730  pages  a  son  sujet  et  le  traite 
a  fond.  II  donne  la  vie  du  grand  poete 
americain,  reconnait  ses  fautes,  les  excuse, 
jusqu'a  un  certain  point,  et  le  plaint.  II 


60  POE  CENTENARY 

etudie  de  la  maniere  la  plus  detaillee  les  oeuvres 
du  poete  et  du  prosateur,  et  nous  pouvons  dire 
que  son  analyse  du  "Corbeau"  est  la  plus 
penetrante  que  nous  ayons  lue:  le  Corbeau, 
c'est  Poe  lui-meme;  Lenore,  c'est  encore  lui. 
"II  y  a  done,"  dit  le  critique  frangais,  "dans 
le  puissant  symbolisme  de  ce  petit  drame 
pathetique,  toute  1'ame  du  poete:  c'est  son 
etre  conscient  aux  prises  avec  son  ideal  ex- 
tatique  et  avec  sa  melancolie  desesperee.  Le 
volume  de  1845,  adjoute  M.  Lauvriere,  con- 
tient  assez  de  chefs-d'oeuvre  pour  immotaliser 
un  nom.  "II  n'a  pas  seulement  'le  Corbeau' 
qui,  malgre  des  raffinements  d'art  qui  touchent 
a  1'artifice,  restera  par  la  solidite  de  son  fond 
comme  pour  la  vigueur  de  ses  effets,  par  la 
prestigieuse  magie  de  sa  musique  comme  par 
le  poignant  pathetique  de  son  desespoir,  la 
plus  puissante  et,  partant,  la  plus  populaire  des 
oeuvres  de  Poe,  un  vrai  chef-d'oeuvre  de 
poesie  fantastique,  sans  egal  en  beaucoup  de 
langues  et  avec  lequel  ne  peut  rivaliser  dans  la 
poesi  anglaise  que  le  charme  moins  con- 
querant,  mais  plus  insinuant  du  "Vieux  Marin" 
de  Coleridge. 

M.  Lauvriere  etudie  en  Poe  conteur,  le  fan- 


POE  CENTENARY  61 

tastique,  la  peur,  1'impulsion,  la  curiosite 
1'imagination,  la  logique  et  le  style,  et  fait  un 
travail  vraiment  magistral.  Poe  critique,  Poe 
cosmogoniste,  nous  interessent  moins  que  Poe 
poete  et  Poe  conteur,  mais  je  le  repete,  le  livre 
de  M.  Lauvriere  est  remarquable.  II  est  ecrit 
avec  une  clarte  bien  franchise,  avec  une  exac- 
titude toute  scientifique,  et  d'un  style,  parfois 
simple,  parfois  fort,  et  parfois  poetique  comme 
les  vers  memes  de  1'auteur  du  "Corbeau." 

De  nombreux  volumes  ont  etc  publics  en 
France  sur  Edgar  Poe,  et  ses  oeuvres  ont  etc 
traduites  maintes  fois  en  frangais.  Parmi  ces 
traductions,  outre  celles  de  Baudelaire,  nous 
pouvons  mentionner  les  poemes  traduits  par 
Stephane  Mallarme,  et  "le  Scarabee  d'Or,"  par 
J.  H.  Rosny.  C'est,  neanmoins,  Baudelaire, 
comme  nous  1'avons  dit,  qui  naturalisa  Poe  en 
France.  Son  admiration  fut  telle  qu'il  fut 
possede  de  son  auteur  favori,  et  Asselineau, 
cite  par  M.  Lauvriere,  nous  dit  "qu'  a  tout 
venant,  ou  qu'il  se  trouvat,  dans  la  rue,  au 
cafe,  dans  une  imprimerie,  le  matin,  le  soir,  il 
•allait  demandant:  'Connaissez-vous  Edgar 
Poe,'  et  selon  la  reponse,  il  epanchait  son 
enthousiasme  ou  pressait  de  questions  son 


62  POE  CENTENARY 

auditeur.  Jules  Lemaitre,  lui-meme,  le 
celebre  ecrivain,  dans  tin  "Dialogue  des 
Morts,"  a  place  Poe  en  compagnie  de  Shake- 
speare et  de  Platon,  quoiqu'il  disc  qu'ils  pre- 
sentent  trois  exemplaires  de  1'espece  humaine 
aussi  dissemblables  que  possible. 

Nous  avons  donne  1'opinion  des  critiques 
frangais  sur  Edgar  Poe;  nous  allons  main- 
tenant  etudier  brievement  quelle  fut  son  in- 
fluence sur  la  poesie  frangaise.  Nous  nous 
servirons  pour  ce  petit  travail  de  1'excellente 
"Anthologie  des  Poetes  Frangais  Contempo- 
rains,"  de  M.  G.  Walch,  publiee  en  1906. 
Nous  avons  deja  compare  Poe  poete  a  Baude- 
laire poete,  et  nous  avons  vu  1'  influence  de 
1'Americain  sur  le  Frangais.  Quant  aux  autres 
poetes  inspires  par  Poe,  ils  le  furent,  en  gen- 
eral, indirectement  et  principalement  par  1'en- 
tremise  de  Baudelaire,  Stephane  Mallarme, 
peut-etre,  le  seul  excepte.  Baudelaire  repeta  le 
precepte  de  Poe  que  la  poesie  n'a  d'autre  objet 
qu'elle-meme.  C'est  la  doctrine  de  "1'art  pour 
Tart"  de  Theophile  Gautier,  et  nous  la  voyons 
portee  a  un  haut  point  de  perfection  par  The- 
odore de  Banville,  qui  avait,  disait-on,  "pour 
ame  la  poesie  meme." 


POE  CENTENARY  63 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly  est  de  1'ecole  de  Poe, 
ainsi  que  Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam  et  Verlaine, 
cet  etonnant  boheme,  que  M.  Anatole  France 
compare  a  Villon,  le  grand  poete  du  XV8 
siecle.  Verlaine  a  meme  un  poeme  intitule 
"Nevermore"  que  nous  citons  ici  comme  un 
souvenir  interessant  du  "Corbeau:" 

NEVERMORE  ! 

Souvenir,  souvenir,  que  me  veux-tu?     L'au- 

tomne 

Faisait  voler  la  grive  a  travers  1'air  atone 
Et  le  soleil  dardait  un  rayon  monotone 
Sur  le  bois  jaunissant  ou  la  bise  detone. 

Nous  etions  seul  a  seule  et  marchions  en  re- 

vant, 

Elle  et  moi,  les  cheveux  et  la  pensee  au  vent. 
Soudain,  tournant  vers  moi  son  regard  emou- 

vant : 
"Quel  fut  ton  plus  beau  jour?"  fit  sa  voix 

d'or  vivant. 

Sa  voix  douce  et  sonore,  au  frais  timbre  ange- 

lique. 

Un  sourire  discret  lui  donna  la  replique, 
Et  je  baisai  sa  main  blanche,  devotement. 


64  POE  CENTENARY 

Ah !   les   premieres   fleurs,   qu'elles   sont  par- 

f  umees ! 

Et  qu'il  bruit  avec  un  murmure  charmant 
Le  premier   "oui"    qui   sort  de  levres   bien- 

aimees ! 

Chez  plusieurs  des  Parnassiens  de  la  pre- 
miere heure,  tels  que  Xavier  de  Ricard,  Leon 
Dierx,  Catulle  Mendes,  ainsi  que  chez  plusieurs 
ecrivains  des  deux  autres  Parnasses,  on  voit 
1'influence  de  Poe.  Le  Parnasse  fut  une  reac- 
tion contre  le  romantisme,  et  fut  suivi  par  le 
symbolisme,  qu'on  a  parfois  appele  "le  deca- 
dent." Arthur  Rimbaud,  1'auteur  du  curieux 
"Sonnet  des  Voyelles,"  fut  un  des  precurseurs 
du  symbolisme.  Henri  de  Regnier  en  fut  le 
chef  inconteste,  et  subit,  sans  aucun  doute,  1' 
influence  de  notre  poete  americain.  Lisons 
surtout  1'admirable  sonnet,  "la  Terre  Doul- 
oureuse  a  bu  le  Sang  des  Reves :" 

La  terre  douloureuse  a  bu  le  sang  des  Reves, 
Le  vol  evanoui  des  ailes  a  passe, 
Et  le  flux  de  la  Mer  a,  ce  soir,  efface 

Le  mystere  des  pas  sur  le  sable  des  greves. 


POE  CENTENARY  65 

Au  delta  debordant  son  onde  de  massacre 
Pierre  a  pierre  ont  croule  le  temple  et  la  cite, 
Et  sous  le  riot  rayonne  un  eclair  irrite 

D'or  barbare  frisant  au  front  d'un  simulacre. 

Vers  la  f oret  nef aste  vibre  un  cri  de  mort ; 
Dans  1'ombre  ou  son  passage  a  hurle  gronde 

encor 
La  disparition  d'une  horde  farouche; 

Et  le  masque  muet  du  Sphinx  ou  nul  n'ex- 

plique 

L'enigme  qui  crispait  la  ligne  de  sa  bouche, 
Rit  dans  la  pourpre  en  sang  de  ce  coucher 

tragique. 

Stephane  Mallarme,  acclame  le  Maitre  par 
beaucoup  de  jeunes  poetes,  fut  selon  1'expres- 
sion  d'un  critique,  "impregne"  d'Edgar  Poe. 
Jean  Richepin  poete  nous  rappelle  1'auteur  du 
"Corbeau,"  ainsi  que  Rene  Ghil,  Edmond  Har- 
aucourt,  Gustave  Kahn,  Jules  Laforgue, 
Gregoire  Le  Roy,  Adolphe  Rette,  Maurice 
Rollinat,  1'auteur  des  "Nevroses,"  parmi  beau- 
coup  d'autres  poetes  contemporains.  Men- 
tionnons,  cependant,  d'une  maniere  toute  spe- 
ciale,  deux  grands  ecrivains  beiges,  Maurice 


66  POE  CENTENARY 

Maeterlinck,  dont  on  a  dit:  "Poe,  le  Poe  de 
la  'Maison  Usher,'  est  a  coup  sur,  son  maitre 
familier;"  et  Emile  Verhaeren.  Appelons 
encore  1'attention  sur  deux  celebres  poetes 
francais,  nes  aux  Etats-Unis:  Stuart  Merrill, 
a  Long  Island,  et  Francis  Viele-Griffin,  ne 
a  Norfolk,  en  Virginie.  Le  petit  poeme  de 
celui-ci,  "Fleurs  du  Chemin,"  est  charmant  et 
est  un  exemple  de  la  "volonte"  de  Poe : 

Crois,  Vie  ou  Mort,  que  t'importe, 

En  1'eblouissement  d'amour? 
Prie  en  ton  ame  forte: 

Que  t'importe  nuit  ou  jour? 
Car  tu  sauras  des  reves  vastes 

Si  tu  sais  1'unique  loi : 
//  n'est  pas  de  nuit  sous  les  astres 

Bt  toute  I' ombre  est  en  toi. 

Aime,  Honte  ou  Gloire,  qu'importe, 

A  toi,  dont  voici  le  tour? 
Chante  de  ta  voix  qui  porte 

Le  message  de  tout  amour? 
Car  tu  diras  le  chant  des  fastes 

Si  tu  dis  ton  intime  emoi : 
//  n'est  pas  de  fatals  desastres, 

Toute  la  defaite  est  en  toi. 


POE  CENTENARY  67 

Quant  a  Stuart  Merrill  ses  "Poings  a  la 
Porte"  nous  interessent  presque  autant  que 
"le  Corbeau."  Le  refrain:  "Entends-tu  tous 
ces  poings  qui  frappent  a  la  porte?"  nous  im- 
pressionne  tout  autant  que  le  "nevermore"  de 
Poe :  Ce  sont  peut-etre  des  amis  qui  frappent, 
mais  le  poete  n'ouvre  pas  a  la  joie  futile,  lui 
qui  veille  seul  parmi  les  esclaves  du  sommeil; 
ce  sont  peut-etre  des  vagabonds,  rodant  de 
male  sorte,  pieds  nus  dans  leurs  sabots,  cou- 
teau  clair  au  poing. 

Us  viennent  quemander,  quand  le  soleil  est  loin, 
La  miche  de  pain  rassis  et  le  pichet  de  vin  sur 
A  la  femme  furtive  et  au  vieillard  lourd 
Qui  ecoutent,  sans  oser  crier  au  secours, 
Leur  haleine  qui  souffle  au  trou  de  la  serrure. 
Si  ce  sont  eux  je  rallumerai  la  lampe  du  foyer 
Pour  que  s'y  chauffent  les  pauvres  que  per- 
sonne  n'a  choyes. 

C'est  peut-etre  Celui  qui  vient  vetu  de  blanc, 
et  quit  fait  dans  la  nuit  le  geste  immense  du 
pardon.  Le  poete  alors  prendra  le  baton  de 
voyage  et  suivra  le  Redempteur  vers  des 


68  POE  CENTENARY 

destinees    meilleures.      "Entends-tu    tous   ces 
poings  qui  frappent  a  la  porte?" 

Je  ne  sais  si  Ton  ne  pourrait  dire  qu'Edmond 
Rostand  lui-meme  n'a  pas  pense  parfois  a  Poe, 
lorsqu'il  ecrivait  son  fier  "Cyrano,"  ou  Ton 
voit  un  tel  culte  pour  1'ideal,  pour  la  beaute 
artistique,  malgre  le  physique  grotesque  du 
heros.  Xavier  Privas,  Albert  Samain,  Camille 
Mauclair,  Charles  Morice,  Leo  Larquier, 
doivent  beaucoup  a  Baudelaire  et  a  Mallarme 
et,  par  consequent,  a  Poe.  Paul  Fort  a  cer- 
tainement  imite  notre  poete  dans  sa  ballade, 
"Cette  Fille,  elle  est  morte,"  ou  nous  voyons 
le  repetend  si  cher  a  Poe,  la  repetition  et  le 
parallelisme  si  bien  decrits  par  M.  le  Dr.  C. 
Alphonso  Smith: 

Cette  fille,  elle  est  morte,  est  morte  dans  ses 

amours. 
Us  Tont  portee  en  terre,  en  terre  au  point  du 

jour. 
Us  1'ont  couchee  toute  seule,  toute  seule  en  ses 

atours. 
Us  sont  rev'  nus  gaiment;  gaiment  avec  le 

jour 

Us  ont  chante  gaiment,  gaiment:    Chacun 
son  tour. 


POE  CENTENARY  69 

Cette  fille,  elle  est  morte,  est  morte  dans  ses 

amours. 
Us  sont  alles  aux  champs,  aux  champs  comme 

tous  les  jours. 

Georges  Marlow,  Beige  comme  Maeterlinck 
et  Verhaeren,  a  donne  de  la  poesie  une  defini- 
tion que  n'eut  pas  desavouee  Poe:  "La 
poesie?  Un  peu  de  fumee  qui  s'eleve  de  Tame 
embrasee  et  qui  parfois,  entremelee  de  rayons 
d'etoile,  se  concrete  en  aureole  autour  de  Tame 
qui  s'eteint." 

Terminons  nos  citations  des  poetes  frangais 
par  le  sonnet  de  Mallarme : 

LE  TOMBEAU  D'EDGAR  POE 
Tel  qu'en  Lui-meme  enfin  1'eternite  le  change. 
Le  Poete  suscite  avec  un  glaive  nu 
Son  siecle  epouvante  de  n'avoir  pas  connu 
Que    la    mort    triomphait    dans    cette    voix 
etrange ! 

Eux,  comme  un  vil  sursaut  d'hydre  oyant  jadis 

1'ange 

Donner  un  sens  plus  pur  aux  mots  de  la 
tribu, 


70  POE  CENTENARY 

Proclamerent  tres  haut  du  sortilege  bu 
Dans   le  flot  sans  honneur  de   quelque  noir 
melange. 

Du  sol  et  de  la  nue  hostiles,  6  grief! 

Si  notre  idee  avec  ne  sculpte  un  bas-relief 
Dont  la  tombe  de  Poe  eblouissante  s'orne, 

Calme  bloc  ici-bas  chu  d'un  desastre  obscur, 
Que  ce  granit  du  moins  montre  a  jamais  sa 

borne 
Aux  noirs  vols  du  Blaspheme  epars  dans  le 

futur. 

Les  vers  franc.ais,  inspires  par  notre  grand 
poete,  sont  generalement  fort  beaux,  mais  je 
doute  qu'ils  egalent  le  merveilleux  "Corbeau," 
meme  traduit  en  prose,  tel  que  nous  le  lisons 
dans  le  livre  de  M.  Lauvriere.  Quelle  fin  ad- 
mirable du  poeme,  que  les  lignes  suivantes : 

Prophete!    dis-je,    etre    de    malheur!    oiseau 

ou  demon,  tou jours  prophete, 
Par  le  ciel  qui  se  deploie  au-dessus  de  nos 
tetes,  par  ce  Dieu  que  tous  deux  nous 
adorons, 


POE  CENTENARY  71 

Dis  a  cette  ame  de  chagrin  chargee  si  dans 

1'Eden  lointain, 
Elle  doit  etreindre  une  vierge  sainte  que  les 

anges  nomment  Lenore, 
Etreindre  une  rare  et  radieuse  vierge  que  les 

anges  nomment  Lenore. 

Le  Corbeau  dit:   "Jamais  plus." 

Que  cette  parole  soit  le  signal  de  notre  sep- 
aration, oiseau  ou  demon!  hurlai-je  en 
me  dressant, 

Rentre  dans  la  tempete,  retourne  au  rivage 
plutonien  de  la  nuit; 

Ne  laisse  pas  de  plume  noire  en  gage  du  men- 
songe  qu'a  profere  ton  ame; 

Laisse  inviolee  ma  solitude !  quitte  ce  buste 
au-dessus  de  ma  porte! 
Le  Corbeau  dit:    "Jama^s  plus!" 

Mais  le  Corbeau,  sans  broncher,  siege  encore, 

siege  tou jours, 
Sur  le  pale  buste  de  Pallas  juste  au-dessus  de 

la  porte  de  ma  chambre, 
Et  ses  yeux  ont  toute  la  semblance  de  ceux 

d'un  demon  qui  reve, 


72  POE  CENTENARY 

Et  la  lueur  de  la  lampe  ruisselant  stir  lui, 
projette  son  ombre  sur  le  plancher, 

Et  mon  ame,  hors  de  cette  ombre  qui  git, 
flottante,  sur  le  plancher, 
Ne  s'elevera  plus ! 

Je  remercie  les  membres  du  Comite  du  Cen- 
tenaire  qui  m'ont  fait  1'honneur  de  m'inviter 
a  parler  ici  en  frangais.  Je  vous  remercie, 
mesdames  et  messieurs,  de  votre  bienveillante 
attention.  Cela  me  fait  le  plus  grand  plaisir 
de  me  retrouver  ici,  a  cette  Universite,  ou, 
comme  Poe,  j'ai  etc  moi-meme  etudiant.  Mon 
sejour  ici  a  ete  bien  court,  mais  il  a  laisse  sur 
mon  esprit  et  sur  mon  ame  des  traces  ineffaga- 
bles.  Je  puis  dire  de  mes  annees  de  jeunesse : 
"Jamais  plus,"  mais  le  souvenir  que  j'ai  con- 
serve de  1'Universite  de  la  Virginie  est  aussi 
immuable  que  le  "Corbeau  qui,  sans  broncher, 
siege  encore,  siege  tou jours  sur  le  pale  buste 
de  Pallas." 


POE  CENTENARY  73 

The  Chairman,  Dr.  Kent: 

Within  recent  years  much  attention  has  been 
given  to  the  influence  of  Hoffman  on  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  and  the  reciprocal  influence  of  Poe 
on  the  German  writers  of  imaginative  prose 
and  more  especially  upon  the  modern  school 
of  German  poets.  We  were  very  fortunate 
in  finding  in  our  own  country  a  talented  young 
German  fresh  from  the  companionship  ot 
these  modern  poets  and  thoroughly  in  touch 
with  the  present  literary  movement  of  the 
Fatherland.  It  will  be  his  province  to  tell  you 
how  far  this  influence  of  Poe  has  extended  and 
to  bring  to  you  the  greetings  of  the  German 
nation  on  this  the  centennial  anniversary  of 
the  birth  of  our  great  alumnus.  I  have  the 
privilege,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  of  presenting 
Dr.  Georg  Edward,  recently  of  Germany,  at 
present  a  member  of  the  faculty  of  Northwest- 
ern University. 

Doctor  Edward,  speaking  of  Poe  in  Ger- 
many, said : 

The  purpose  of  my  brief  address  is  to  re- 
call to  memory  the  tribute  which  German  lit- 
erature, and,  accordingly,  the  German  people 


74  POE  CENTENARY 

as  a  whole,  has  rendered  and  is  still  rendering 
to  the  genius  whose  hundredth  birthday  we 
are  celebrating  at  this  time.  It  will  be  neces- 
sary, in  the  very  first  place,  to  glance  back  at 
the  way  in  which  Poe  gradually  became  well- 
known  in  Germany,  then  to  attempt  to  answer 
the  question  why  at  the  present  time,  sixty 
years  after  the  poet's  death,  the  temperament 
of  precisely  this  American  author  is  felt  to  be 
specifically  modern  by  a  European  nation; 
why  it  is  that  we  behold  in  him  a  man  of  let- 
ters who  was  far  in  advance  of  his  own  times, 
and  who,  accordingly,  must  be  said  to  belong 
to  no  earlier  age  than  our  own. 

Poe's  relations  to  German  literature,  and 
the  relations  of  German  literature  to  Poe,  are 
both  varied  and  manifold.  The  influence  of 
Ernst  Theodor  Amadeus  Hoffmann  upon  the 
author  of  the  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and 
Arabesque"  has  been  but  recently  investigated 
in  detail  by  Professors  Gruener  and  Cobb.  It 
is  my  purpose  merely  to  show  how  highly 
prized  Poe  is  in  Germany,  and  why  he  is  re- 
garded there  as  the  typical  and  characteristic 
American  author.  That  the  Germans  have 
occupied  themselves  with  him  continuously 


POE  CENTENARY  75 

and  minutely  is,  perhaps,  not  an  occasion  for 
especial  comment.  Germany  is  the  very  home 
of  what  Goethe  called  "Cosmopolitan  litera- 
ture" (WeltKteratur}.  There  exists  in  Ger- 
many an  almost  marvelous  familiarity  with 
the  literature  of  other  nationalities,  and  it  is 
not  at  all  an  exaggeration  to  maintain  that 
there  is  scarcely  any  important  poet  or  writer 
in  the  whole  world,  who  has  not  been  treated 
"historisch-kritisch"  by  some  German  scholar. 
Furthermore,  there  has  been  an  endless  num- 
ber of  translations  of  foreign  works,  and  even 
poets  and  authors  of  very  moderate  ability 
have  often  enjoyed  a  renascence  in  the  German 
tongue.  This  broadly-flowing  stream  of  trans- 
lations, which  the  peculiar  elasticity  and 
adaptability  of  the  German  language  have 
made  so  possible,  has  brought  it  to  pass  that 
the  German  nation,  not  merely  in  professional 
literary  circles,  but  in  the  general  group  of 
cultured  people,  is  so  largely  acquainted  with 
the  literature  of  other  lands.  It  is  on  account 
of  this  fact  that  the  Germans  have  also  ac- 
quired the  ability  to  recognize  what  is  specific- 
ally and  characteristically  national  in  the  liter- 
ature of  other  peoples;  in  other  words,  the 


76  POE  CENTENARY 

Germans  have  developed  a  very  discriminat- 
ing sense  of  what  is  specifically  English  in 
an  English  writer,  Russian  in  a  Russian, 
French  in  a  Frenchman,  or  American  in  an 
American.  That  which  Goethe  once  affirmed 
concerning  French  poetry  and  French  litera- 
ture, namely,  that  it  could  not  possibly  be  de- 
tached for  one  moment  from  the  life  and  the 
emotion  of  the  whole  nation,  is  none  the  less 
true  of  every  nation's  poetry  and  literature. 
And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  various  foreign  literatures 
which  the  German  people  possesses,  leads  to 
a  feeling  for  the  national  individuality  of  an 
author,  and  the  more  highly  this  quality  is 
exhibited  by  a  writer,  the  more  is  he  valued 
in  Germany,  if  only,  at  the  same  time,  his  art 
gives  evidence  of  a  certain  international  spirit. 
In  the  light  of  these  assertions,  the  fact  that 
the  Germans  regard  Poe  as  a  most  prominent 
American  writer,  nay,  in  general,  as  the  great- 
est of  American  authors,  assumes  an  unusual 
significance. 

Poe's  naturalization  has  taken  place  more 
slowly  in  Germany  than  in  France.  He  has, 
to  be  sure,  never  enlisted  the  services  of  any 


POE  CENTENARY  77 

German  Baudelaire  or  Mallarme  as  inter- 
preter, but,  on  the  other  hand,  very  important 
authors  and  historians  of  literature  have  been 
his  advocates,  and  his  "Raven,"  at  least,  has 
found  a  number  of  first-rate  translators.  In 
the  period  from  1855  to  the  present  day,  there 
have  appeared  three  English  editions  of  his 
works  in  Leipsic,  as  well  as  a  large  number 
of  editions  of  various  "Tales"  for  the  use  of 
schools.  The  first  translation  of  his  short 
stories  appeared  in  two  volumes  in  Leipsic 
from  1855  to  1858,  and  to  these  have  been 
added  thirteen  further  translations  by  most 
varied  authors,  under  the  imprint  of  all  sorts 
of  publishers.  A  selected  translation  of  his 
"Poetical  Works"  has  appeared  but  once, 
namely,  that  of  Hedwig  Lachmann,  published 
in  1891,  but  we  encounter  separate  transla- 
tions of  separate  poems  scattered  through  the 
pages  of  many  journals,  and  "The  Raven" 
has  been  adapted  to  the  mother-tongue  of  the 
Germans — with  greater  or  less  felicity — some 
dozen  times.  It  is  worthy  of  especial  remark 
that  the  best  translation,  that  by  Eduard 
Mauthner,  appeared  (along  with  Coppee's 
"The  Smiths'  Strike")  in  the  so-called  "New 
Theatrical  Library  of  Vienna,"  and  has  gone 


78  POE  CENTENARY 

through  three  editions,  the  last  in  1894;  in 
this  transmigration  "The  Raven"  has  for  a 
long  time  belonged  to  the  repertoire  of  the 
"show  pieces"  of  elocutionists,  and  of  those 
actors  who  occasionally  make  a  public  appear- 
ance as  reciters.  Naturally  enough,  the 
"Tales"  have  appeared  in  many  editions,  and 
I  think  it  is  not  without  significance  that  they 
have  been  taken  up  by  all  the  "Popular  Libra- 
ries," such  as  those  of  Reclam,  Hendel,  Cotta, 
Spemann,  and  Meyer.  It  is  only  within  the 
last  seven  years  that  a  complete  German  edi- 
tion of  Poe's  Tales  and  Poems  has  appeared, 
with  an  excellent  introduction  by  the  editor : 
the  ten  volumes  constituting  "Poe's  Werke," 
by  Hedda  and  Arthur  Moeller-Bruck,  which, 
taken  as  a  unit,  must  be  counted  as  the  most 
important  contribution  which  has  been  made 
to  Poe's  memory  in  Germany  up  to  the 
present  time.  The  only  features  of  this 
edition  which  we  should  characterize  as  in- 
adequate (and  in  fact  far  inferior  to  other 
similar  attempts)  are  the  selected  poems 
in  the  translation  by  Hedwig  Lachmann,  al- 
ready mentioned,  and  the  now-superseded, 
though  meritorious,  "Memoir"  of  Ingram, 
which  precedes  the  first  volume. 


POE  CENTENARY  79 

The  translations  and  discussions  of  Poe, 
which  have  appeared  in  Germany,  cannot 
compare,  either  in  their  extent  or  in  their 
influence,  with  similar  contributions  which 
have  been  made  in  France.  For  thirteen 
German  translations  of  Poe's  Tales  in  Ger- 
many, we  have  no  less  than  nineteen  in 
France;  for  one  collection  of  selected  poems 
in  Germany,  four  complete  translations  in 
France;  for  one  complete  edition  of  the 
works  in  Germany,  two  such  in  France. 
But  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  French  literature 
occupied  itself  with  Poe  at  an  earlier  date 
than  did  the  Germans,  it  need  not  be  as- 
sumed that  Poe  found  an  entrance  into  Ger- 
many by  way  of  France.  It  is  only  in  the 
most  recent  years  that  German  interest  in 
Baudelaire  has  breathed  new  life  into  the 
interest  for  Poe;  only  at  the  present  day  has 
Poe  come  to  be  recognized  as  a  thoroughly 
modern  author.  Germany  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Poe  quite  as  early  as  did 
France,  but  there  has  never  been  found  any 
person  among  us  who  made  the  American 
poet  such  an  object  of  religious  adoration  as 
did  Baudelaire  (the  German  character  is 


80  POE  CENTENARY 

very  chary  about  going  to  quite  such  lengths 
as  this!)  or  who,  like  Theophile  Gautier, 
discovered  in  him  something  the  like  of 
which  the  world  had  never  before  beheld,  an 
intellectual  beverage  which  reminds  him  of 
"those  strange  American  drinks,  compounded 
of  fizzing,  prickling  soda-water,  and  ice,  and 
every  conceivable  sort  of  exotic  alcoholic 
ingredient." 

The  estimation  of  Poe  in  Germany  came 
to  pass  unostentatiously,  but  has  held  its 
own  consistently.  The  first  thorough  dis- 
cussion of  the  poet  I  find  in  Herrig's 
"Hand-Book  of  North  American  National 
Literature  for  the  year  1854,"  a  work  of  very 
little  authority  on  its  own  account,  which 
nevertheless,  in  spite  of  mistaken  opinions 
and  defective  information  (it  speaks  of 
"Ulalume"  and  "Annabel  Lee,"  for  instance, 
as  "writings"),  speaks  out  clearly  and  con- 
cisely the  certain  conviction:  "Poe  left 
behind  him  a  name  which  is  bound  to  live  in 
the  annals  of  American  literature."  Poe's 
actual  introduction  to  Germany  was  due  to 
that  eminent  novelist  and  author,  who  has  in 
other  respects  largely  contributed  to  our 


POE  CENTENARY  81 

knowledge  of  America  by  the  democratic 
spirit  of  his  writings — I  mean  Friedrich 
Spielhagen.  It  was  in  1860  that  Spielhagen 
published  in  the  journal  "Europa"  a 
thorough-going  study  of  our  poet,  whom  he 
calls  the  greatest  lyric  singer  that  America 
has  produced;  furthermore,  he  occupied  him- 
self in  1883  with  an  essay  of  considerable 
length  treating  somewhat  exhaustively  the 
contest  between  Poe  and  Longfellow  on  the 
matter  of  plagiarism,  and,  in  addition,  he 
had  already  published  a  translation  of  a 
number  of  Poe's  poems  in  the  year  1858. 
Two  years  before  that  time  Adolf  Strodtmann 
had  published  similar  translations  in  his 
"Song-  and  Ballad-Book  of  American  and 
English  Poets,"  to  which  he  added  in 
1870  his  widely-circulated  "American  An- 
thology," a  work  which  besides  "The  Masque 
of  the  Red  Death"  contained  "The  Raven," 
"Annabel  Lee,"  and  "The  Bells"  in  very 
good  translations,  and  in  this  manner  made 
these  poems  at  once  famous  throughout 
all  Germany.  Of  no  less  importance  is 
the  attitude  assumed  toward  Poe  by  the  his- 
torians of  literature:  Adolf  Stern  in  his 


82  POE  CENTENARY 

"History  of  Recent  Literature,"  Eduard 
Engel  in  his  "History  of  North  American 
Literature,"  and  Carl  Bleibtreu  in  his 
"History  of  English  Literature"  have  been 
especially  influential  in  preparing  the  way 
for  an  appreciation  of  Poe  in  Germany. 
The  most  important  undertaking,  one  more- 
over that  is  fully  modern  in  all  its  tendency, 
is  the  already-mentioned  translation  of  Poe's 
works  in  ten  volumes  edited  by  Arthur 
Moeller-Bruck,  and  which  has  been  com- 
pleted within  the  past  year.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  two  tales,  which  could  not  be 
translated,  it  contains  all  the  stories  of  this 
class,  and,  in  addition  (for  the  first  time 
in  Germany),  "Eureka."  Moeller-Bruck  has 
contributed  on  his  own  account  a  valuable 
essay  on  "Poe's  Creative  Activities,"  which, 
in  general,  does  full  justice  to  Poe's  tem- 
perament; in  a  few  places  only  (he  appears 
to  be  entirely  unacquainted  with  the  latest 
literature  of  the  subject,  and  more  par- 
ticularly with  Professor  Harrison's  edition) 
are  his  results  unsatisfactory.  The  basis  of 
his  work  still  continues  to  be  the  "Memoir" 
of  Ingram,  the  Edinburg  edition  of  which 
is  the  foundation  of  the  German  work. 


POE  CENTENARY  83 

It  would  carry  us  too  far  if  I  were  to 
discuss  the  numberless  essays  on  Poe  which 
have  appeared  in  the  leading  German 
periodicals.  At  best  I  could  only  give  a 
barren  resume  of  their  contents,  and  there- 
with I  should  surely  overstep  the  bounds  of 
time  which  have  been  set  for  my  address. 
From  the  tenor  of  these  articles,  however,  it 
is  easy  to  discover  how  we  have  gradually 
come  to  the  conclusion  in  Germany  that  Poe 
is  to  be  regarded  as  a  thoroughly  modern 
author,  and  as  the  most  characteristic 
American  poet.  In  order  to  understand 
this  one  must  call  to  mind  the  evolution 
which  German  literature  has  gone  through 
in  the  last  twenty  years.  Apart  from  those 
circles  which  are  required  ex  oMcio  to 
concern  themselves  with  German  literature, 
we  find  among  English-speaking  people  a 
very  incomplete,  not  to  say  a  comical  con- 
ception of  what  the  Germans  have  ac- 
complished in  this  field.  German  character 
is  assuredly  not  over-easy  to  understand, 
while  its  literature,  which  is  the  expression 
of  this  character,  is  still  more  complicated 
in  its  nature.  Here  in  America,  where  people 


84  POE  CENTENARY 

are  decidely  prone  to  generalizations,  German 
literature  is  described  either  as  heavy,  brood- 
ing, and  tasteless,  or  it  is  given  (by  a  very 
short  process)  the  general  label  of  "decadent." 
One  of  these  estimates  is  precisely  as 
fatuous  as  the  other.  At  present  we  have 
to  concern  ourselves  only  with  the  second, 
however:  the  expression  "decadent"  belongs 
to  the  repertory  of  those  who  have  to  char- 
acterize the  "modern."  German  literature 
has  undergone  great  transformations  in  the 
last  thirty  years,  just  as  German  philosophy, 
German  music,  and  German  art  have  done. 
After  having  disposed  of  "consistent  nat- 
uralism," or  perhaps  as  a  reaction  against 
it,  there  has  appeared  an  unmistakable  new 
era  of  German  psychological  development: 
after  sensitiveness,  romance,  the  "second 
generation,"  realism,  and  naturalism,  comes 
a  new  species  of  impressionism,  Nervosity. 
Almost  simultaneously  it  has  influenced  the 
entire  art,  literature,  and  music  of  the 
western  European  continent.  It  cannot  be 
denied  that  there  is  a  certain  element  of 
morbidity  in  all  this,  but  severe  psychological 
struggles  (and  those  struggles  did  precede 


POE  CENTENARY  85 

the  recent  art-movement)  never  manifest 
themselves  without  some  pathological  symp- 
toms. Underneath  the  hard  pressure  of  the 
Art  of  the  Actual  there  has  been  a  quest  for 
new  methods  of  expression  for  the  infinitely 
subtle  variations  of  feeling  which  come  surg- 
ing in  upon  the  modern  individual,  and  there 
has  been  a  discovery  of  new  sensations,  which 
are  rooted  in  the  nervous  system.  I  need 
only  to  call  to  mind  the  music  of  Liszt  and 
Wagner,  who  have  attempted  to  give  ex- 
pression to  everything  inexpressible  that 
lies  concealed  in  the  innermost  depths  of 
our  souls,  or  the  painting  of  Bocklin  and 
Klinger,  who  have  conducted  us  into  a  new 
world  of  tones  and  color-impressions — who 
have  rendered  the  finest  shadings  of  emotion 
in  a  way  which  could  not  have  been  expressed 
at  an  earlier  time.  And  it  is  toward  this 
goal  that  the  modern  literature  of  western 
Europe  is  also  striving:  the  new  times  have 
brought  new  shades  of  emotion,  and  the 
new  shades  of  emotion  have  demanded  new 
methods  of  expression,  and  new  sensations. 
It  is  altogether  indifferent  whether  we  call 
modern  literature  symbolistic,  impressionistic, 


86  POE  CENTENARY 

mystical,  or  flatly  "decadent":  the  one  thing 
which  underlies  all  these  tendencies  is  the 
striving  after  something  new,  something 
remote  and  strange.  But  in  all  this 
"decadent"  literature  we  have  not  to  deal 
with  nervous  prostration,  or  nervous  irrita- 
tion, or  even  with  the  moral  corruption  of 
modern  city-life,  but  a  revolt  of  the  indi- 
vidual against  the  mediocrity,  the  dead-level 
of  Philistinism, — a  battle  with  materialism, 
with  the  age  of  machinery,  the  prosy  morality 
of  mere  utilitarianism  and  the  struggle  for 
existence. 

And  how  is  it  in  regard  to  the  "Pilgrim 
of  Sorrow,"  as  Professor  Harrison  has 
named  him,  him  whose  memory  we  recall 
today  with  veneration  and  love,  with  a  feeling 
of  tender  regret?  Perhaps  in  his  case  there 
was  not  so  clear  a  feeling  as  with  the  poets 
of  today  that  he  was  groping  after  new  sen- 
sations, in  order  to  give  expression  to  the 
emotions  which  dominated  his  psychical  ex- 
istence. But,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
certain  it  is  that  he  stands  at  the  gateway  of 
the  New  Art,  the  art  of  modern  humanity, 
as  it  comes  to  meet  us  at  the  close  of  the 


POE  CENTENARY  87 

last  century.  Poe  was  seeking  for  the  new 
world  of  actualities, — the  very  fact  that  in  a 
portion  of  his  works  he  recoils  so  sensitively 
from  the  surrounding  unsympathetic  world 
of  actuality  is  proof  enough  of  this.  He 
made  a  quest  for  a  means  of  expression  for 
that  which  moved  his  inner  soul,  and  the 
forms  of  expression  which  sufficed  for  his 
contemporaries  were  no  longer  adequate  for 
him.  In  his  significant  introduction  to  Poe's 
poems,  Professor  Kent  has  indicated  how 
rarely  the  poet  was  able  to  fully  express 
what  hovered  before  the  eyes  of  his  imagina- 
tion, how  "his  conceptions  were  at  times  far 
beyond  his  own  powers  of  expression,"  as 
"much  that  was  written  is  not  understood, 
since  with  ears  we  do  not  hear,  and  with 
eyes  we  do  not  see,  for  both  music  and 
vision  are  for  those  of  poetic  temperament  and 
artistic  gift."  How  far  was  Poe,  in  this 
respect,  in  advance  of  his  age!  Since  the 
time  when  he  wrote  his  melodious  lines,  our 
feeling  for  the  musical  values  of  language 
has  become  more  and  more  developed  and 
refined,  more  and  more  has  lyric  poetry 
come  nearer  to  the  domain  of  music.  The 


88  POE  CENTENARY 

very  thing  which  our  American  poet,  so 
sensitive  for  the  tonal  effects  of  his  verses, 
strove  for,  many  years  ago  (as  is  proven  by 
the  frequent  variants  in  the  different  texts 
of  his  poems),  the  modern  verse-technic  is 
striving  today  to  attain,  more  earnestly  than 
ever  before.  As  early  as  1900  the  Austrian 
writer  Rudolf  Kassner  pointed  out,  in  his 
book  "Mysticism,  Artists,  and  Life,"  Poe's 
high  endowment  for  music.  He  calls  him  a 
psychologist  of  the  most  painful  nicety  of 
apprehension,  a  mystagogue  full  of  intoxi- 
cating rhythm,  self-indulgent  and  yielding, 
a  reveler  and  an  adorer  of  angels,  sarcastic 
and  moody,  a  comedian  and  a  fatalist. 
Dante  and  Poe — one  is  startled  at  seeing 
these  two  names  side  by  side — had  one  thing 
in  common  (according  to  our  writer)  :  the 
necessity  of  having  faith, — Dante  because  of 
the  wealth,  and  Poe  because  of  the  poverty 
of  his  endowment  of  conscience.  Dante 
believed  in  Heaven  and  Hell,  Poe  in  the  con- 
tinuation of  life  in  the  grave,  and  his 
theology  was  mesmerism  compounded  with 
cryptography.  He,  too,  had  his  Beatrice, 
whom  he  celebrated  in  song  quite  as  subtly  as 


POE  CENTENARY  89 

did  the  immortal  Florentine.  But  one  thing 
he  possessed,  of  which  Dante  had  no  sus- 
picion:— music.  It  was  his  divinity,  even 
when  he  was  least  conscious  of  it.  "And 
what  did  Virginia  Clemm  mean  for  the  art 
of  Poe?  Perhaps  at  the  very  moment  in 
his  life  when  he  was  most  faithful  to  her, 
he  was  rapt  away  by  his  divinity,  Music." 
That  is  the  music  which  every  modern  poet 
and  artist  carries  about  in  his  soul,  those  are 
the  "words  ineffable"  which  in  vain  strive  to 
make  their  way  out  into  the  light  of  day,  and 
which  in  the  end  cause  the  heart  to  consume 
away  upon  itself.  "Who  are  these  Helens, 
Lenores,  Ulalumes,"  asks  Kassner  once 
again,  "these  ghostly  beings  with  violet 
eyes  and  tremulous  lids?  His  art  is  not  able 
to  tell  us  that.  These  maidens  appear  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  his  dreams, — so  much 
art  is  able  to  tell.  They  conduct  him  into 
enchanted  gardens,  where  enamored  roses 
languish  in  the  moonlight;  they  row  him 
in  swart  craft  to  the  enchanted  islands,  and 
the  waves  die  away  upon  the  shore  like 
yearning  after  enjoyment;  they  lead  him  to 
the  castles  of  death,  which,  wind-forsaken 


90  POE  CENTENARY 

and  immersed  in  eternal  night,  loom  from 
the  livid  waters  of  a  languid  sea;  they  speak 
out  of  graves  and  point  up  to  the  stars. 
Though  they  appear  at  the  beginning  and  at 
the  end,  as  the  first  and  last  star  of  the  night 
of  dreams,  nevertheless  the  dream  has 
whelmed  them  up.  This  is  the  art  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe!" 

That  which  gives  so  strong  a  sense  of 
modernity  in  Poe  is  not  the  fact  that  he  led 
the  life  of  a  dreamer,  that  he  himself  had 
the  consciousness  of  being  "no  book  whose 
meaning  has  been  completely  fathomed,"  to 
speak  with  Conrad  Ferdinand  Meyer,  but 
"a  man  with  his  own  contradiction."  He 
himself  gives  expression  to  this  conviction 
when  he  defends  himself  (in  the  preface  to 
his  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque") 
against  the  charge  of  "Germanism,"  and 
cries  out:  "Let  us  admit,  for  the  moment, 
that  the  'phantasy-pieces'  now  given  are 
Germanic,  or  what  not.  Then  Germanism 
is  'the  vein'  for  the  time  being.  Tomorrow 
I  may  be  anything  but  German,  as  yesterday 
I  was  everything  else."  And  that  he  was, 
most  assuredly :  subjected  to  the  never-ending 


POE  CENTENARY  91 

changes  of  the  moods  of  his  spirit.  And  in 
the  tales  and  writings  which  he  has  left 
behind  him  this  multifariousness  of  his 
artistic  and  literary  temperament  comes  to 
clearest  expression.  He  who  wrote  most 
melodious  stanzas,  and  who  had  the  utmost 
horror  of  crass  actuality,  he  it  was  who 
possessed  the  knowledge  or  the  presentiment 
of  our  modern  actuality :  one  has  merely  to 
recall  his  criminal  stories,  or  his  modern 
types  which  remind  us  of  similar  creations 
in  the  writings  of  Dostojewski,  or  the 
delineation  of  milieus,  as  in  "The  Man  of 
the  Crowd"  which  recall  impressions  in  the 
novels  of  Zola.  And  alongside  of  these 
stand  those  tales,  the  fancies  of  his  dreams, 
with  which  he  transfigured  and  beautified 
life,  those  creations  which  sprang  from  his 
vague  visions,  in  which  he  seems  to  us  a 
visionary  or  an  idealist, — as  in  his  Eureka- 
song.  Ethical  principles,  which  he  should 
be  bound  to  champion,  concerned  him  not — 
he  has  no  questions  to  put  about  the  goals 
of  humanity,  nothing  about  its  future — but 
he  possesses  that  idealism  which  has  fullest 
faith  in  the  greatness,  the  purity,  and  the 


92  POE  CENTENARY 

depth  of  human  feelings,  and  which  has 
called  into  being  creations  which  alone 
represent  these  feelings: — William  Wilson 
and  Roderick  Usher  and  Eleanora,  Ligeia, 
Berenice  and  Morella.  And  then  his  fond- 
ness for  the  horrible,  the  malicious.  One 
has  instinctively  the  feeling  that  Poe's  soul- 
life  must  have  been  that  of  the  criminal,  as 
though  it  gave  him  unspeakable  pleasure 
to  penetrate  into  the  very  depths  of  crimi- 
nality, to  experience  its  very  sensations  and 
to  follow  out  the  whole  course  of  its  origin. 
Such  a  state  of  mind  is  one  which  is  only 
too  frequently  encountered  in  daily  life,  but 
the  exceptional  thing  about  Poe  is  precisely 
this,  that  he,  as  poet,  is  obsessed  by  this  mania, 
and  holds  fast  to  it  in  his  writings.  Poe  is 
the  first  of  that  long  list  of  modern  authors — 
Krafft-Ebing,  Lombroso,  Dostojewski,  Niet- 
zsche and  Bourget — who  trace  back  the  evil 
element  in  man,  and  consequently  his  crimi- 
nality and  wickedness,  to  an  abnormal  mental 
condition. 

And  so  Poe  appears  in  the  category  of  those 
poets  and  authors  to  whom  German  literary 
research  has  given  the  attribute  "modern." 


POE  CENTENARY  93 

One  further  reason  why  Germany  gives  him 
so  high  a  place  is,  perhaps,  that  we  stand 
there  in  a  neutral  attitude  toward  the  uninvit- 
ing side  of  his  character,  his  unsparing 
sarcasm,  the  provocative  element  in  his  nature 
which  made  enemies  out  of  his  friends.  In 
the  older  world,  where  we  can  look  back  upon 
generations  of  artists,  authors,  and  musicians, 
one  is  only  too  well  aware  of  the  fact  that 
those  persons  who  have  been  humanity's 
richest  spiritual  benefactors  were  often,  •  in 
actual  life,  anything  but  model  citizens  and 
blameless  toilers.  One  recognizes,  for  more 
reasons  than  need  to  be  specified,  that  people 
cannot  be  estimated  by  set  rules,  and  that 
literature,  as  well,  must  reflect  both  the  good 
and  the  bad,  for  life  is  made  up  of  both,  and 
both  keep  the  world  moving.  We  are  only 
too  well  aware  in  Germany  how  prone  Ameri- 
cans are  to  lay  down  inflexible  rules  to  which 
even  the  poet  must  bend  himself.  As  early 
as  in  Eduard  Engel's  "History  of  North 
American  Literature,"  in  which  Poe  is  called 
"an  exceptional  phenomenon  for  both  British 
and  American  authorship,"  we  encounter  the 
undisguised  satire :  "The  life  of  all  the  other 


94  POE  CENTENARY 

important  American  authors  passes  by 
smoothly;  they  grow  old  in  honor  and  abun- 
dance, they  play  the  part  of  literary  patriarchs 
with  dignity,  and  show  that  authorship  in 
America  is  as  brilliant  and  lucrative  a  career 
as  boring  for  petroleum  or  building  railroads." 
Is  it  hard  to  understand  why  Poe,  finely-or- 
ganized and  aristocratic,  who  did  not  possess 
the  force  of  character  to  protect  his  sensibili- 
ties against  the  commonalties  of  daily  life, 
became  ever  more  and  more  embittered  ?  Why 
he  paid  back  the  humiliations  which  he  had 
to  endure  anew  every  day  of  his  life,  with 
that  sarcasm,  that  unsparing  onslaught  on  the 
mediocrity  which  shut  him  in  from  every  side  ? 
Was  he  not,  in  fact,  a  dreamer  out  of  ancient, 
half-romantic  Europe,  who  was  altogether  out 
of  place  in  the  brutally  realistic  milieu  of  the 
new  world?  Call  to  mind  his  sensitive  tem- 
perament, his  refined  conception  of  poetic  art 
and  literature,  and  realize  that  he  was  fated 
to  do  his  singing  to  an  age  in  which  the  first 
railroads  cut  their  way  across  the  country,  in 
which  the  telegraph  made  the  conquest  of  the 
world,  and  steamships  and  factories  darkened 
the  sunlight!  Poe's  fierce  irritability  towards 


POE  CENTENARY  95 

the  life  which  surrounded  him,  and  to  which 
he  felt  himself  superior,  gave  itself  breathing- 
space  in  those  criticisms  which  made  the  whole 
world  his  enemy,  and  plunged  him  into  that 
deep,  incurable  melancholy  which  makes  the 
theme  of  his  "Raven"  and  of  all  his  poems : 
the  plaint  of  a  heart  which  is  dragged  down 
from  the  highest  heights  of  enthusiasm  for 
the  true  and  the  beautiful  into  the  mire  of 
sordid  vulgarity. 

And  if  the  Germans,  who  cultivate  cosmo- 
politan literature,  are  prone  to  seek  for  the 
national  trait  in  every  author,  they  have  also 
found  this  in  Poe.  The  very  earliest  critics 
called  him  "the  most  original  spirit  in  Ameri- 
can literature;"  a  nature  "in  which  the  leaning 
toward  the  freakish,  melancholy,  mysterious 
and  awesome  coincides  with  the  sense  of 
verity,  the  realistic  acumen  of  the  Yankee." 
But  it  is  only  the  most  recent  criticism  which 
finds  in  Poe  the  characteristic  American  poet, 
the  greatest  American  poet;  one  of  the  argu- 
ments in  favor  of  this  view  is  not  precisely 
flattering,  but  the  proof  is  mathematical  in 
its  logicalness:  every  poet,  who  truly  bore 
the  arms  of  his  calling,  has  come  into  conflict 


96  POE  CENTENARY 

with  actuality,  but  few  have  been  victorious 
in  this  struggle,  and  none  has  ever  emerged 
from  it  without  sore  wounds.  Is  it  not  there- 
fore logically  inevitable  that  any  true  poet 
who  should  come  into  contact  with  the 
American  life  which  encounters  him  in  the 
larger  northern  cities  with  a  materialism 
bordering  upon  brutality,  must  go  to  destruc- 
tion under  these  influences?  An  American 
poet  was  in  the  nature  of  things  an  impossi- 
bility: he  could  never  survive.  But  there 
have  been  attempts  to  treat  the  matter  less 
superficially.  In  the  contemporaries  of  Poe — 
such  as  Longfellow,-  Lowell,  Emerson  and 
Whittier — one  has  recognized,  not  American 
poets,  but  merely  those  who  have  continued 
English  literature  upon  American  soil. 

In  Poe,  on  the  other  hand,  one  recognizes 
an  artist  who  understood  American  life  as 
none  other  had  done,  who  recognized  its  crim- 
inal tendencies  long  before  they  had  reached 
their  climax,  and  who  comprehended,  decades 
in  advance,  what  an  evolution  the  American 
spirit  was  destined  to  undergo  in  the  field  of 
inventions  and  discoveries.  To  be  sure,  Poe 
was  interested  merely  in  the  physiological,  or 
rather  the  pathological  side  of  the  American 


POE  CENTENARY  97 

temperament,  but  the  one-sidedness  of  his  en- 
tire being  is  itself  a  part  of  the  American 
nature.  He  is  thoroughly  American,  even 
when,  compelled  to  write  tales  merely  in  order 
to  secure  the  barest  necessities  of  life,  he  is 
bound  to  continually  invent  what  is  new,  and 
in  being  able  to  show  interest  and  curiosity 
where  his  heart  was  not  directly  engaged. 
Curiosity  is  certainly  a  most  prominent  trait 
in  American  life,  or  interest,  if  the  other  term 
seem  offensive.  Poe's  interest  was  directed 
toward  the  most  strange  and  odd  mysteries, 
and  yet  he  refused  to  concern  himself  with 
things  which  were  ready  and  finished.  All 
that  was  incomplete,  unsolved,  unexplained, 
challenged  him  to  pursuit;  he  was  bound  to 
complete  it  with  his  imagination;  and  so  he 
has  told  of  mysterious  secret  documents,  of 
inexplicable  crimes  and  discoveries,  so  he  has 
tracked  out  the  possibilities  of  mesmerism,  the 
prospects  of  aerial  navigation — such  themes  as 
these  appealed  to  his  interest.  But  when  such 
things  became  realized,  they  became  totally 
indifferent  to  him :  he  had  to  discover  new 
possibilities  which  should  excite  his  curiosity. 
And  yet,  even  to  the  last,  he  never  parted 
company  with  his  own  self — he  remained  the 


98  POE  CENTENARY 

artist  that  he  was  in  the  beginning,  the  pilgrim, 
who  with  bleeding  heart  is  still  searching  for 
the  land  of  undiscovered  beauty.  So  Spiel- 
hagen  greets  him  and  pays  him  homage : 
"Unfortunate,  fortunate  man!  for,  confess  it, 
thou  hast  beheld  her,  the  fairest,  the  loftiest, 
in  those  rare,  unspeakable  moments:  and  she 
has  kissed  thee,  but  in  passing,  as  she  kisses 
mortals;  but  thy  soul  was  filled  with  the  echo 
of  those  kisses ;  and  this  rapture  thou,  starving 
one,  wouldst  not  have  bartered  for  all  the 
gold  of  Ormuzd;  thou,  the  greedy  for  fame, 
wouldst  not  have  sold  it  for  all  the  glory  and 
renown  and  honor  of  those  who,  in  thine  eyes, 
were  no  priests  at  all,  who  counted  themselves 
as  priests  only  because  the  world  counted  them 
such !" 

And  in  this  hour,  in  which  we  pay  our 
homage  to  the  poet,  the  artist,  the  author,  I, 
too,  would  bring  to  him  at  least  one  tribute 
from  across  the  sea — a  tribute  which  sprang 
from  genuine  enthusiasm,  and  which,  how- 
ever insignificant  it  may  appear,  gives  its  testi- 
mony as  to  how  widespread  is  the  knowledge 
of  Poe  in  Germany,  how  deep  the  respect.  I 
myself  belonged,  at  a  very  youthful  age,  to 
a  literary  group  which  included  Poe  among 


POE  CENTENARY  99 

its  objects  of  study,  out  of  pure  love  for  the 
theme :  we  were  then  scarcely  fifteen-year-old 
schoolboys,  but  we  had  the  genuine  reverence 
for  the  great  and  the  beautiful  which  had  not 
yet  been  weakened  or  overcast  by  any  of  the 
bitter  experiences  of  life.  We  also  tried  our 
hand  at  translating  Poe's  poems  into  our 
mother-tongue,  and  out  of  these  efforts  one 
translation  emerged  which  for  its  simple, 
melodious  beauty  surpasses  anything  which  I 
have  encountered  in  these  last  days  while 
busied  in  preparation  for  this  Commemora- 
tion. It  is  the  touching  poem  "To  My 
Mother,"  and  the  translator,  of  whom  I  have 
lost  all  traces  for  many  years,  was  called 
Friedrich  Kraft: — 

Weil  ich  empfinde,  dass  der  Engel  Heer, 

Das  fliisternd  sich  begrusst  im  Himmelreiche, 

Kein    Wortlein   findet,   sucht    es   noch   so   sehr, 

Das  dem  erhabnen  einen  "Mutter"  gleiche, 

Drum  muss  ich  dir  den  teuren  Namen  geben, 

Die  du  mir  mehr  als  eine  Mutter  bist — 

In  dir  allein  noch  find'  ich   Kraft  zum   Leben, 

Jetzt  da  Virginia  mir  entrissen  ist. 

Die  Mutter — meine  Mutter,  die  gestorben — 

War  nur  die  Mutter  meiner  selbst,  doch  du 

Gebarst  mir  die,  die  ich  zum  Weib,  erworben, 

Und  die  ich  liebe  sender  Rast  und  Ruh, 

So  viel  mal  sie  mir  teurer  als  mein  Ich, 

So  viel  mal  mehr  verehr'  und  lieb'  ich  dich ! 


VI 
IN    CABELL    HALL,    AGAIN 

THE  final  exercises  of  the  Commemoration 
took  place  in  Cabell  Hall  Tuesday  even- 
ing, January   19.      President  Alderman   wel- 
comed the  audience: 

We  are  met  again  on  this  evening  of  the 
Centenary  of  his  birth  to  honor  the  memory 
and  to  study  the  life  and  work  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,  a  man  of  genius,  who,  for  a  brief  period, 
studied  within  the  halls  of  this  University. 
The  task  of  appraising  the  value  to  the  world 
of  Poe,  the  poet  and  the  man  of  letters,  has 
been  assigned  by  our  committee  to  the  two 
scholars  who  have  already  discharged  their 
duties  so  ably  and  thoughtfully  this  morning, 
and  to  two  other  scholars  whom  I  shall  shortly 
have  the  honor  to  introduce  to  you,  Professor 
Barrett  Wendell,  of  Harvard  University,  who 
will  speak  to  you  upon  "The  Nationalism  of 
100 


POE  CENTENARY  101 

Poe,"  and  Professor  Alphonso  Smith,  of  North 
Carolina,  who  will  speak  upon  the  "Ameri- 
canism of  Poe."  All  Americans  look  up  to 
Harvard  University  with  reverence  and  re- 
spect, especially  at  this  moment  when  the  most 
venerable  of  our  institutions  is  passing  into 
a  new  epoch  of  its  vigorous  life,  and  I  shall 
be  pardoned,  I  am  sure,  for  a  feeling  for  the 
University  of  North  Carolina  as  close  and 
warm  as  a  son  may  bear. 

It  is  in  no  sense  my  task  to  discuss  in  a 
critical  way  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  I  may,  how- 
ever, with  propriety  utter  a  simple,  intimate 
word,  expressing  for  him  the  tenderness  and 
affection  which  this  University  has  always 
borne  for  him,  as  well  in  the  days  of  his  way- 
wardness and  eclipse,  as  in  this  time,  when 
the  star  of  his  fame  has  climbed  to  the  zenith 
and  is  shining  there  with  intense  and  settled 
glory.  There  is  nothing  finer  in  the  world 
than  the  love  that  men  bear  for  institutions, 
unless  it  be  the  solemn  pride  which  institutions 
display  in  men  who  have  partaken  of  their 
benefits.  Celebrations  similar  to  this  have  been 
held  to-day  in  London  and  in  five  American 


102  POE  CENTENARY 

cities — New  York,     Philadelphia,    Baltimore, 
Richmond  and  Boston. 

"Seven  cities  claimed  the  birth  of  Homer  dead 
Through    which    the    living    Homer    begged    his 
bread." 

That  experience  of  the  elder  world  is  re- 
peated to-day  save  that  the  number  of  cities 
is  five  instead  of  seven  through  which  the  liv- 
ing Poe  suffered  and  struggled.  It  is  the  same 
old  story,  too,  of  outward  defeat  and  ap- 
parent oblivion,  and  yet  of  inward  victory 
and  a  sure  grasping  of  enduring  fame.  I 
may  be  frank  and  say  that  there  was  a 
time  when  Poe  did  not  greatly  appeal  to 
me.  I  felt  the  sheer,  clear  beauty  of  his 
song,  indeed,  as  one  might  feel  the  beauty 
of  the  lark's  song,  but  his  detachment  from 
the  world  of  men,  where  my  interests  most 
centered,  left  me  unresponsive  and  simply 
curious.  The  great  name  of  poet  had  held 
place  in  my  thinking  as  signifying  a 
prophet,  or  as  a  maker  of  divine  music  for 
men  to  march  by  towards  serener  heights. 
My  notion  of  the  poet  came  down  to  me  out  of 
the  Hebraic  training  that  all  of  our  consciences 


POE  CENTENARY  103 

receive;  and  Poe  did  not  fit  into  this  concep- 
tion. I  have  come,  however,  to  see  the  limita- 
tions of  that  view,  and  to  behold  something 
very  admirable  and  strange  and  wonderful  in 
this  proud,  gifted  man,  who  loved  beauty  and 
mystery,  who  had  such  genius  for  feeling  the 
pain  of  life  and  the  wonder  of  it,  who  grasped 
so  vainly  at  its  peace  and  calm,  and  who  suf- 
fered, one  feels,  a  thousand  deaths  under  its 
disciplines  and  conventions.  To  me  the  glory 
of  Poe  as  a  man  is  that,  though  whipped  and 
scourged  by  human  frailties,  he  was  able  to 
keep  his  heart  and  vision  unstained  and  to 
hold  true  to  the  finest  thing  in  him,  so  that 
out  of  this  fidelity  to  his  very  best  there  issued 
immortal  work.  World  poets  like  world  con- 
querors are  very  rare.  Not  many  universities 
have  had  the  fortune  to  shelter  a  world  poet, 
and  to  offer  him  any  nourishment.  Christ 
College,  at  Cambridge,  has  warmed  itself  at 
the  fire  of  Milton's  genius  for  three  hundred 
years.  In  our  own  young  land,  with  its  short 
intellectual  annals,  Williams  College  sheltered 
Bryant  for  a  while;  and  Virginia,  Poe;  and 
Harvard,  Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Holmes; 
Bowdoin,  Longfellow ;  and  Oglethorpe,  a  little 


104  POE  CENTENARY 

college  in  Georgia,  that  other  child  of  genius 
and  misfortune,  Sidney  Lanier.  We  might 
say,  therefore,  that  only  four  out  of  the  four 
hundred  American  colleges  have  sheltered 
great  poets,  and  perhaps  only  two,  poets  of 
world-wide  fame,  and  perhaps  only  one,  a 
world  artist.  Not  such  a  poet  as  Sophocles  or 
Virgil  or  Dante  or  Shakespeare  have  we 
nourished  here,  to  be  sure,  but  a  world  poet 
in  a  legitimate  and  classic  sense.  In  many  of 
these  colleges  minor  poets  have  appeared,  who 
have  sung  truly  and  clearly,  like  our  own 
Thompson,  and  Lucas,  and  Page,  and  Lindsay 
Gordon  and  Armistead  Gordon.  So  long  is 
the  list  of  the  great  singers  who  knew  no 
college  training,  and  so  short  the  list  of  those 
who  did,  that  we  may  well  cherish  here  our 
high  privileges  in  the  fame  of  Poe.  I  have 
often  wondered  just  what  the  University  of 
Virginia  did  for  Poe  in  that  short  year  of  his 
life  here.  He  makes  no  mention  of  the  Uni- 
versity in  his  writings,  but  that  is  like  him 
and  his  detachment  from  time  and  place.  He 
saw  the  University  when  it  was  young.  He 
must  have  heard  much  talk  about  him  of  the 
dreams  and  hopes  for  the  new  institution 


POE  CENTENARY  105 

founded  here  on  the  western  borders  of  the 
young  republic  by  the  statesman  whose  renown 
then  filled  the  world.  The  great  philosopher 
of  democracy  and  the  great  classic  artist  must 
have  often  passed  each  other  on  the  Lawn 
and  doubtless  often  held  speech  with  each 
other,  little  dreaming  that  each  would  share 
with  the  other  the  widest  fame  to  be  accorded 
to  the  thousands  who  would  hereafter  throng 
these  halls.  It  is  probably  true  that  "Annabel 
Lee"  and  the  "Ode  to  Helen"  would  have  sung 
themselves  out  of  Poe's  heart  and  throat  if  he 
had  never  seen  the  University  of  Virginia; 
but  surely  there  was  genuine  inspiration  in 
the  place  in  that  time  of  its  dim  beginnings. 
There  were  noble  books  here,  few  in  number 
and  great  in  quality.  Coleridge,  Byron, 
Shelley,  Keats,  and  the  great  Greeks  were  all 
here;  sincere  scholars  from  the  old  world  and 
the  new  had  set  up  their  homes  here.  Here 
were  unbeaten  youths  with  young  hearts  and 
passions;  here  hopes  gleamed  and  ambitions 
burned.  And  then,  as  now,  beauty  dwelt  upon 
the  venerable  hills  encircling  the  horizon,  and 
the  University  itself  lay  new  and  chaste  in  its 
simple  lines  upon  the  young  Lawn.  I  venture 


106  POE  CENTENARY 

to  think  sometimes  that  when  our  poet  wrote 
those  stateliest  lines  of  his — 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome — 

perhaps  there  flashed  into  his  mind's  eye  the 
vision  of  the  Rotunda  upon  some  such  night 
as  this,  with  its  soaring  columns  whitened  by 
the  starlight  and  vying  with  the  beauty  and 
witchery  of  the  white  winter  about  it. 

It  is  perhaps  easier  to  answer  the  question, 
What  has  Poe  done  for  the  University?  We 
hear  much  of  endowments  in  connection  with 
universities.  The  words  donor  and  endow- 
ment are  the  technical  phrases  of  college  ad- 
ministration baffling  and  alluring  the  builders 
of  universities.  Poe  has  endowed  his  alma 
mater  with  immortal  distinction,  and  left  it  a 
legacy  which  will  increase  with  the  years. 
This  legacy  is  not  endowment  of  money,  for 
there  was  no  scrip  left  in  his  poor  purse,  but 
simply  the  endowment  of  a  few  songs  and  a 
fund  of  unconquerable  idealism.  I  am  not  of 
those  who  believe  that  Poe  has  been  to  our 
young  men  a  kind  of  star  that  has  lighted 
them  to  their  destruction,  as  some  good 


POE  CENTENARY  107 

Presbyterians  believe  Burns  to  have  been  to 
the  youth  of  Scotland.  The  vast  tragedy  of 
his  life,  its  essential  purity,  its  hard  work,  the 
unspeakable  pity  of  it,  have  kept  his  name  a 
name  of  dignity  and  the  suggestions  of  his 
career  to  modern  youth  are  suggestions  of 
beauty  and  of  labor.  Let  us  concede  that  he 
was  no  exemplar  or  pattern  of  correct  living 
to  whom  we  can  point  our  youth,  but  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  little  room  on  West  Range  in 
which  dwelt  a  world  poet  who  never  wrote 
an  unclean  word,  and  who  sought  after  beauty 
in  form  as  passionately  as  a  coarse  man  might 
seek  after  gain,  has  contributed  an  irreducible 
total  of  good  to  the  spirit  which  men  breathe 
here,  as  well  as  a  wide  fame  to  his  alma  mater 
that  will  outlive  all  ill-fortune,  change,  or 
disaster.  May  I  call  this  spiritual  residuum 
a  clear  tradition  of  beauty  and  poetic  under- 
standing, a  feeling  for  the  gold  and  not  the 
dross  in  life,  a  genius  for  reverence,  an  in- 
stinct for  honor,  and  an  eye  to  see,  burning 
brightly,  the  great  realities  that  are  wont  to 
pale  and  disappear  before  the  light  of  common 
day? 


108  POE  CENTENARY 

Poems  contributed  for  the  occasion  were 
read.  The  following,  by  Robert  Burns  Wil- 
son, entitled  "Genius,"  was  "inscribed  with 
great  admiration  and  esteem  to  Dr.  Charles 
W.  Kent:" 

Not  in  the  courts  of  kings  alone 

Are  found  life's  princes  of  the  blood : 
They  rise  and  reign  where  field  and  flood 

Know  not  the  temple  nor  the  throne. 

From  some  unnoted,  silent  dawn 

Their  souls  receive  the  golden  dower; 
And  conscious  of  their  spirit's  power 

They  put  the  crimson  mantle  on. 

Across  the  desert  of  their  days 

They  look  with  fixed  imperious  eyes 
And  on  some  sky,  beyond  the  skies, 

They  bend  the  soul's  untiring  gaze. 

In  that  far,  undistracted  bourne, 

They  build  the  kingdom  of  the  mind : 
And  there — unvexed  by  Fate's  ill  wind, — 

They  rule  unmoved — in  might  unshorn. 


POE  CENTENARY  109 

The  sculptured  glory  of  that  dream 

Through  all  the  echoing  courts  they  know : 
The  domes — the  palaces  of  snow — 

The  bastioned  walls  that  glow  and  gleam. 

The  clouded-mighty  arches  ring 
With  music  and  the  mingling  call 
Of  trumpets  and,  above  them  all, 

The  cry— The  King!— It  is  the  King!! 

Far-faded  from  their  fancy's  ken 
The  fashion  of  the  world's  regard; 
Alike  to  them  the  wounding  shard, 

The  censure  and  the  praise  of  men. 

The  small  mind's  hate — the  world's  disdain, 
The  fool's  forlorn  felicity: — 
The  masked  and  mocking  mimicry — 

All  menace,  their  set  minds  make  vain. 

Yet  from  a  race  which  cannot  fail, 
The  torch,  instinctively,  they  bear; 
Their  destined  course  they  keep — they  dare 

Some  new  and  untried  sea  to  sail. 


110  POE  CENTENARY 

Creative,  undisturbed,  they  see 
The  super-truth  in  Beauty's  mold; 
In  form — the  soul,  in  clay — the  gold, 

Not  man's  day,  but  eternity. 

Across  the  desert  of  their  days 
The  never-ceasing  voices  call; 
They  do  not  fear  nor  faint  nor  fall 

Nor  change  their  soul's  untiring  gaze. 

Not  in  the  courts  of  kings  alone 

Are  found  life's  princes  of  the  blood: 
They  rise  and  reign  where  field  and  flood, 

Know  not  the  temple  nor  the  throne. 


POE  CENTENARY  111 

Mr.  Ben  C.  Moomaw,  of  Virginia: 
EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

I 
Lo!    ever    among    the    bards    was    he    the 

wondrous  Israfel, 
For  never  to  the  listening  world  sang  they  so 

wildly  well; 
Nor  ever  in  all  the  earth  arose,  from  lips  that 

mortal  be, 
A    burst    of    song    so    marvelous,    a    holier 

melody ! 
The  soul  that  soaring  sought  the  sky  across 

the  starlit  way 
Was  not  a  soul  of  the  sordid  earth,  whatever 

the  world  may  say, — 
Was  not  a  sodden  soul  of  the  clod,  whatever 

the  clods  may  say. 

II 

Vain  is  the  orient  vision  for  eyes  that  can- 
not see, 

And  silent  are  the  morning  stars  to  ears  that 
heavy  be, 

And  sweet  the  song  of  minstrel  to  none  in  all 
this  earth 

Whoso  the  godlike  song  shall  hold  a  thing  of 
little  worth; 


112  POE  CENTENARY 

And  silent  so  for  weary  years  the  poet's  lyre 

has  been, 
And  mute  the  singing  lips  to-day  amid  the 

haunts  of  men 
Hushed  by  the  clamor  of  the  earth,  by  the 

clamor  of  noisy  men. 

Ill 
Wide  are  the  reaches  of  the  sea,  and  far  the 

flight  of  time, 
And  many  mysteries  there  be  in  every  earthly 

clime, 
But  not  the   sea,   nor   time,   nor   space,   nor 

mysteries  of  men, 
Nor  soaring  height  nor  darkling  depth  escape 

the  searching  ken 
Of  him  whose  song  unearthly,  like  the  splendor 

of  the  sun, 
The  aureate   glory  kindleth  that  makes   the 

nations  one; — 
For  the  joy  of  love  and  the  sorrow  of  life, 

maketh  the  whole  world  one. 

IV 

For  yet  his  vibrant  song  was  like  the  sobbing 

of  the  sea, — 
The  Sea! — the  awful  glory  and  the  rhythm 

of  the  sea, 


POE  CENTENARY  113 

Akin  in  stately  measure,  to  the  whirling  of 

the  spheres; 
The  noble  measured  marching  of  innumerable 

years 
Adown   the   magic   corridors,   where   mighty 

anthems  roll, 
In  the  mystic  gloom  and  glory  of  the  elemental 

soul,— 
The  tragic  world,  and  infinite,  that  centers  in 

the  soul. 

V 

Alike  the  choral  grandeur  in  the  temple  of  the 

night, — 
The  thunder  of  the  tempest  in  the  waning  ot 

the  light; 
The  mournful  sighing  of  the  wind  amid  the 

wintry  wood; 
The     splendid     diapason     of     the     universal 

flood; 
The  threnody  of  sorrow  in  the  soul  that  never 

dies, — 
Thus   sang   the   bard   whose   lyre    rang   the 

anthems  of  the  skies, 
And  showered  on  a  listening  world  the  starry 

melodies. 


114  POE  CENTENARY 

VI 

Afar  the  centuries  may  wing  their  never  rest- 
ing flight, 
Empires  arise,  and  vanish  then  in  an  eternal 

night, 
While  be  the  annals  of  the  race  to  joy  or 

sorrow  given, 
While  yet  we  borrow  love  of  life,  or  hope  of 

bounteous  heaven, 
So   shall   his    fame    enduring   be,    a   coronal 

sublime ; 
A  burst  of  cosmic  light  upon  the  skies  of  every 

clime ; 
A  path  of  dazzling  splendor  to  the  far  oft 

bounds  of  time. 

VII 

Oh  ye  who  zealous  are  to  blame  the  weakness 
of  the  man, 

Who  virtuous,  blaze  to  all  the  world  your  un- 
relenting ban, 

Aye,  doubtless  are  ye  without  guilt  to  hurl  the 
sinless  stone, 

And  crush  a  quivering  heart.  But  stay,  it  is 
not  nobly  done, 

For  if  there  be — or  much  there  be — that  we 
have  not  forgiven, 


POE  CENTENARY  115 

Remember  that  the  sternest  tongue  is  shamed 

by  silent  heaven, — 
That    e'en    a    thousand    tireless    tongues    are 

hushed  by  piteous  heaven. 

VIII 

Though  Truth  is  Argus-eyed  and  stern,  pity- 
ing Love  is  blind, 

And  twain  they  are  in  all  the  world  save  in 
the  noblest  mind, 

But  wed  they  are  where  angels  fare,  and  lo! 
the  heavenly  song 

The  breathless  skies  acclaim  to-night,  the  sing- 
ing stars  prolong; — 

The  choral  stars, — and  lo!  a  star  lost  to  its 
native  light 

Has  lifted  songs  of  beauty  amid  the  Stygian 
night, — 

Has  lifted  marvelous  melodies  out  of  the 
gloomy  night. 

IX 

Thus  e'er  it  was  and  e'er  shall  be  while  earthly 

cycles  roll, 
The  sweetest  music  of  the  world  swells  from 

the  saddest  soul; 


116  POE  CENTENARY 

But  since  the  guard  at  Eden's  gate  who  held 

the  glittering  sword 
Hath  sheathed  its  flaming  terrors  in  the  pity 

of  the  Lord, 
The  luminous  soul  hath  borne  afar  its  golden 

argosies 
From  the  moorings  of  its  sorrow  to  the  beauty 

of  the  skies, — 
From  earthly  ports  in  shadow  to  the  splendor 

of  the  skies. 

X 

Aye,  thus  it  is  that  of  the  bards  the  wondrous 

Israfel 
Is  he,  for  never  a  mortal  bard  has  sung  so 

wildly  well; 
Nor  ever  in  all  the  earth  arose  from  lips  that 

mortal  be, 
A  burst   of   song  so  marvelous,   so  pure  a 

melody. 
The  soaring  soul  that  sought  the  sky  across 

the  starlit  way 
Was  not  a  soul  of  the  sordid  earth,  whatever 

the  world  may  say, — 
Was  not  a  sodden  soul  of  the  clod,  whatever 

the  clods  may  say. 


POE  CENTENARY  117 

Dr.  Barrett  Wendell,  of  Harvard,  speaking 
on  "The  Nationalism  of  Poe,"  said: 

One  hundred  years  ago  to-day,  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  was  born  in  Boston.  The  vital  records 
of  that  period  are  scanty  and  defective.  It  is 
only  within  the  past  two  weeks  that  my  friend, 
Mr.  Walter  Watkins,  has  collected,  from  the 
newspapers  of  1808  and  1809,  notices  of  all 
the  plays  in  which  the  parents  of  Poe  appeared 
during  that  season.  From  them  it  is  clear 
that  Mrs.  Poe  withdrew  from  the  stage  about 
Christmas  time,  1808,  and  returned  only  on 
February  9th,  1809,  when  one  of  the  news- 
papers congratulated  her  on  her  happy  re- 
covery from  her  confinement.  This  is  appar- 
ently the  most  nearly  contemporary  record  of 
Poe's  birth.  The  researches  of  Mr.  Watkins 
did  not  end  here.  It  had  been  supposed  that 
all  record  of  Poe's  birthplace  was  lost;  and 
indeed  it  is  improbable  that  he  himself  ever 
knew  just  where  it  was.  By  examining  the 
tax  lists  for  1808  and  1809,  Mr.  Watkins  dis- 
covered that  David  Poe  was  taxed  that  year 
as  resident  in  a  house  owned  by  one  Henr> 
Haviland,  who  had  bought  the  property,  a  few 


118  POE  CENTENARY 

years  before,  from  a  Mr.  Haskins,  a  kinsman, 
I  believe,  of  the  mother  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son. The  house  was  pulled  down  some  fifty 
years  ago;  but  Mr.  Watkins  has  ascertained 
from  the  records  that  it  was  situated  at  what 
is  now  No.  62  Carver  Street.  In  1809,  this 
was  a  respectable,  though  not  a  fashionable, 
part  of  the  city.  There  Poe  was  born. 

The  circumstances  of  Poe's  career  were  rest- 
less; on  the  whole,  they  were  solitary. 
Throughout  his  forty  years  of  mortal  sunlight 
and  shadow,  he  was  never  quite  in  accord 
with  his  surroundings.  He  was  never  tried 
by  either  of  the  tests  for  which  ambition 
chiefly  longs — the  gravely  happy  test  of  wide 
responsibility,  or  the  stimulatingly  happy  test 
of  dominant  success.  Troublous  from  begin- 
ning to  end  his  earthly  life  seems;  to  him, 
this  world  could  not  often  have  smiled  con- 
tagiously sympathetic.  So  much  is  clear;  and 
yet  a  little  more  is  clear  as  well.  When  he 
sought  sympathy,  or  found  semblance  of  it, 
and  thus  for  a  little  while  could  feel  trouble 
assuaged,  he  could  find  it  most  nearly  among 
those  generous  phases  of  Southern  spirit 
which  surrounded  the  happier  years  of  his 


POE  CENTENARY  119 

youth.  There  was  little  trace  of  it,  for  him, 
in  the  still  half-Puritan  atmosphere  of  that 
New  England  where  he  chanced,  a  stranger, 
to  see  the  light. 

So  it  was  with  deep  and  reverent  sense  of 
your  Southern  generosity  that  I  received  your 
grave  and  friendly  summons  to  join  with  you 
here  and  now.  Here,  in  this  sanctuary  of 
Virginia  tradition,  you  have  not  scrupled  to 
call  me  from  the  heart  of  New  England,  to 
pay  tribute  not  only  for  myself,  and  for 
my  own  people,  but  tribute  in  the  name  of 
us  all,  to  the  memory  of  Poe.  If  one  could 
only  feel  sure  of  performing  such  a  task 
worthily,  no  task,  of  duty  or  of  privilege, 
could  be  more  solemnly  happy.  For  none 
could  more  wonderfully  imply  how  Virginians 
and  the  people  of  New  England, — each  still 
themselves, — have  so  outlived  their  long 
spiritual  misunderstandings  of  one  another 
that  with  all  our  hearts  we  can  gladly  join 
together,  as  fellow  countrymen,  in  celebrating 
the  memory  of  one  recognized  everywhere  as 
the  fellow-countryman  of  us  all. 

For  everywhere  is  no  hyperbolic  word  to 
describe  the  extent  of  Poe's  constantly  extend- 


120  POE  CENTENARY 

ing  fame,  sixty  years  after  they  laid  him  in 
his  grave.  His  name  is  not  only  eminent  in 
the  literary  history  of  Virginia,  or  of  New 
York,  or  of  America;  it  has  proved  itself 
among  the  very  few  of  those  native  to  America 
which  have  commanded  and  have  justified  ad- 
miration throughout  the  civilized  world.  Even 
this  does  not  tell  the  whole  story.  So  far  as 
we  can  now  discern,  he  has  securely  risen 
above  the  mists  of  time  and  the  fogs  of  ac- 
cident. His  work  may  appeal  to  you  or  leave 
you  deaf;  you  may  adulate  it  or  scrutinize  it, 
as  you  will;  you  may  dispute  as  long  and  as 
fruitlessly  as  you  please  concerning  its  positive 
significance  or  the  magnitude  of  its  greatness. 
The  one  thing  which  you  cannot  do — the  thing 
for  which  the  moment  is  forever  past — is  to 
neglect  it.  Forever  past,  as  well,  all  loyal 
Americans  must  gladly  find  the  moment, — if 
indeed  there  ever  was  a  moment, — when  any 
of  us  could  even  for  an  instant  regret  it.  There 
is  no  longer  room  for  any  manner  of  question 
that  the  work  of  Poe  is  among  the  still  few 
claims  which  America  can  as  yet  urge  un- 
challenged in  proof  that  our  country  has 
enriched  the  literature  of  the  world.  Even 


POE  CENTENARY  121 

with  no  other  reason  than  this,  loyal  Americans 
must  already  unite  in  cherishing  his  memory. 

So  true,  so  obvious,  this  must  seem  to-day 
that  we  are  prone,  in  accepting  it,  to  forget 
the  marvel  of  it,  as  we  forget  the  marvels  of 
Nature, — of  sunrise,  of  sleep,  of  birth,  of 
memory  itself.  The  marvel  of  it,  in  truth,  is 
none  the  less  reverend  because,  like  these,  we 
need  never  find  it  miraculous.  Happily  for  us 
all, — happily  for  all  the  world, — Poe  is  not 
an  isolated,  sporadic  phenomenon  in  our 
national  history.  He  was  an  American  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  If  we  ponder  never  so 
little  on  those  commonplace  words,  we  shall 
find  them  charged  with  stirring  truth.  To 
summarize  the  life  of  any  nation,  there  is  no 
better  way  than  to  turn  to  the  successive  cen- 
turies of  its  history,  and  to  ask  yourself,  with 
no  delay  of  slow  or  painful  study,  what  names 
and  what  memories,  unborn  at  the  beginning 
of  these  epochs,  were  in  enduring  existence 
when  they  ended.  When  we  thus  consider  our 
United  States  of  America,  the  spiritual 
splendor  of  the  nineteenth  century  glows 
amazing. 

That  nineteenth  century,  as  we  all  gravely 


122  POE  CENTENARY 

know,  was  by  no  means  a  period  of  national 
concord.  Rather,  far  and  wide,  it  was  a  period 
when  the  old  order  was  fatally  passing,  yield- 
ing place  to  new.  Thus  inevitably,  throughout 
our  country,  it  was  a  period  of  honest  and 
noble  passion  running  to  the  inspiring  height 
of  spiritual  tragedy.  For  no  tragedy  can  be 
more  superbly  inspiring  than  that  of  epochs 
when  earnestly  devoted  human  beings,  spiritu- 
ally at  one  in  loyalty  to  what  they  believe  the 
changeless  ideals  of  truth  and  of  righteous- 
ness, are  torn  asunder  by  outbreaks  of  such 
tremendous  historic  forces  as  make  the  me- 
chanical forces  of  Nature  seem  only  thin 
parables,  imaging  the  vaster  forces  still  which 
we  vainly  fancy  to  be  immaterial.  It  is  not 
until  epochs  like  this  begin  to  fade  and  sub- 
side into  the  irrevocable  certainty  of  the  past 
that  we  can  begin  to  perceive  the  essential 
unity  of  their  grandeur.  Nothing  less  than 
such  supreme  ordeal  of  conflict  can  finally 
prove  the  quality  and  the  measure  of  heroes; 
and  in  the  stress  and  strain,  no  human  vision 
can  truly  discern  them  all;  but  once  proved 
deathless,  the  heroes  stand  side  by  side,  im- 
mortally brethren.  So,  by  and  by,  we  come 


POE  CENTENARY  123 

wondrously  to  perceive  that  we  may  honour 
our  own  heroes  most  worthily, — most  in  the 
spirit  which  they  truly  embodied,  most,  I  be- 
lieve, as  they  themselves  would  finally  bid  us, 
if  our  ears  could  still  catch  the  accents  of  their 
voices, — when  we  honour  with  them  their 
brethren  who,  in  the  passing  years  of  passion, 
seemed  for  a  while  their  foes. 

When  we  of  America  thus  contemplate  the 
nineteenth  century,  we  cannot  fail  to  rejoice 
in  the  memories  it  has  left  us.  They  are  so 
many,  so  full  of  inspiration,  so  various  in  all 
but  the  steadfastness  with  which  they  with- 
stand the  deadening  test  of  the  years,  that  it 
would  be  distracting,  and  even  invidious,  to 
call  the  roll  of  our  heroes  at  a  moment  like 
this.  What  more  truly  and  deeply  concerns 
us  is  an  evident  historical  fact,  generally  true 
of  all  the  human  careers  on  which  our  heroic 
memories  of  the  nineteenth  century  rest  un- 
shaken. Among  those  careers  almost  all — 
North  and  South,  East  and  West — won,  in 
their  own  time,  distinguished  public  recogni- 
tion. What  I  have  in  mind  we  may  best  real- 
ize, perhaps,  if  for  a  moment  we  imagine  our- 
selves in  some  nineteenth  century  congregation 


124  POE  CENTENARY 

of  our  countrymen,  similar  to  this  where  we 
are  gathered  together.  Fancy,  for  example, 
the  companies  assembled  to  welcome  Lafay- 
ette, far  and  wide,  during  his  last  visit  to  our 
nation,  which  he  had  helped  call  into  being. 
Among  the  American  worthies  then  in  their 
maturity,  and  still  remembered  by  others  than 
their  own  descendants,  almost  every  one  would 
already  have  been  well  and  widely  known.  A 
local  stranger  in  any  such  assemblage,  to 
whom  his  host  should  point  out  the  more  dis- 
tinguished personages  then  present,  would 
generally  have  found  their  names  not  only 
memorable  but  distinguished,  just  as  we  should 
find  them  still.  And  what  would  thus  have 
been  the  case  in  1824  would  have  stayed  so, 
five  and  twenty  years  later.  The  heroes  of  oui 
olden  time  were  mostly  gladdened  by  the 
consciousness  of  recognized  and  acknowledged 
eminence. 

Now,  in  contrast  with  them,  let  us  try  to 
imagine  a  figure  which  might  perhaps  have 
attracted  the  eye  in  some  such  American  as- 
semblage sixty-five  years  ago.  Glancing 
about,  you  might  very  likely  have  observed 
a  slight,  alert  man,  with  rather  lank,  dark  hair, 


POE  CENTENARY  125 

ind  deep,  restless  eyes.  His  aspect  might 
tauntingly  have  attracted  you,  and  set  you  to 
vondering  whether  he  was  young  or  old.  On 
he  whole  you  might  probably  have  felt  that 
ic  looked  distrustful,  defiant  if  not  almost 
•epellant,  certainly  not  ingratiating,  or  en- 
gagingly sympathetic.  Yet  there  would  have 
lovered  about  him  an  impalpable  atmosphere 
)f  fascination,  which  would  have  attracted 
rour  gaze  back  to  him  again  and  again;  and 
:ach  new  scrutiny  would  have  increased  your 
mpression  that  here  was  some  one  solitary, 
ipart,  not  to  be  confused  with  the  rest.  He 
,vould  hardly  have  been  among  the  more  dis- 
:inguished  personages,  on  the  platform  or  at 
:he  high  table.  You  might  well  have  wondered 
whether  anybody  could  tell  you  his  name. 
:\nd  if,  in  answer  to  a  question,  your  neighbor 
lad  believed  that  this  was  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
you.  might  very  probably  have  found  the  name 
3y  no  means  familiar.  You  would  perhaps 
lave  had  a  general  impression  that  he  had 
written  for  a  good  many  magazines,  and  the 
[ike, — that  he  had  produced  stories,  and 
verses,  and  criticism,  but  the  chances  are  that 
you  would  not  clearly  have  distinguished  him 


126  POE  CENTENARY 

unless  as  one  of  that  affluent  company  of 
literati  who  illustrated  the  '40's,  and  who  are 
remembered  now  only  because  their  names 
occur  in  essays  preserved  among  Poe's  col- 
lected works.  Almost  certainly  he  would 
hardly  have  impressed  you  as  a  familiarly 
memorable  personage.  His  rather  inconspicu- 
ous solitude  would  not  have  seemed  note- 
worthy. Very  likely,  if  you  were  a  stranger 
thereabouts,  you  would  have  paid  little  more 
attention  to  his  presence,  but  would  rather  have 
proceeded  to  inquire  who  else,  of  more  solid 
quality,  was  then  and  there  worth  looking  at. 
All  this  might  well  have  happened  little 
more  than  sixty  years  ago;  and  though  to 
some  of  us  sixty  years  may  still  seem  to 
stretch  long,  they  are  far  from  transcending 
the  period  of  human  memory.  It  would  be 
by  no  means  remarkable  if  in  this  very  com- 
pany, here  present,  there  were  some  who  can 
remember  the  year  1845,  or  the  election  of 
President  Taylor.  Beyond  question,  every 
one  of  us  has  known,  with  something  like 
contemporary  intimacy,  friends  and  relatives, 
only  a  little  older  than  ourselves  in  seeming, 
to  whom  those  years  remained  as  vivid  as  you 


POE  CENTENARY  127 

shall  find  the  administration  of  President 
Roosevelt.  That  olden  time,  in  fact,  when 
amid  such  congregations  as  this,  anywhere 
throughout  America,  the  presence  of  Poe 
would  hardly  have  been  remarked,  has  not 
quite  faded  from  living  recollection.  And  yet, 
at  this  moment,  there  is  no  need  to  explain 
anywhere  why  we  are  come  together  here, 
from  far  and  wide,  to  honor  his  memory. 
Not  only  all  of  us  here  assembled,  not  only 
all  Virginia,  and  all  New  York,  and  all  New 
England,  and  all  our  American  countrymen  be- 
side, but  the  whole  civilized  world  would  in- 
stantly and  eagerly  recognize  the  certainty  of 
his  eminence.  What  he  was,  while  still  en- 
meshed in  the  perplexity  of  earthly  circum- 
stance, is  already  become  a  matter  of  little  else 
than  idle  curiosity.  What  he  is  admits  of  no 
dispute.  So  long  as  the  name  of  America  shall 
endure,  the  name  of  Poe  will  persist,  in  serene 
certainty,  among  those  of  our  approved  na- 
tional worthies. 

In  all  our  history,  I  believe,  there  is  no  more 
salient  contrast  than  this  between  the  man  in 
life  and  his  immortal  spirit.  Just  how  or 
when  the  change  came  to  be  we  need  not 


128  POE  CENTENARY 

trouble  ourselves  to  dispute.  It  is  enough  for 
us,  during  this  little  while  when  we  are  to- 
gether, that  we  let  our  thoughts  dwell  not  on 
the  Poe  who  was  but  on  the  Poe  who  is.  And 
even  then  we  shall  do  best  not  to  lose  our- 
selves in  conjectures  concerning  his  positive 
magnitude,  or  his  ultimate  significance,  when 
you  measure  his  utterances  with  what  we  con- 
ceive to  be  absolute  truth,  or  the  scheme  of  the 
eternities.  We  should  be  content  if  we  can 
begin  to  assure  ourselves  of  what  he  is,  and 
of  why. 

The  Poe  whom  we  are  met  to  celebrate  is 
not  the  man,  but  his  work.  Furthermore,  it 
is  by  no  means  all  the  work  collected  in  those 
volumes  where  studious  people  can  now  trace, 
with  what  edification  may  ensue,  the  history, 
the  progress,  the  ebb  and  the  flow,  of  his 
copious  literary  production.  His  extensive 
criticism  need  not  detain  or  distract  us;  it  is 
mostly  concerned  with  ephemeral  matters,  for- 
gotten ever  since  the  years  when  it  was  writ- 
ten. His  philosophical  excursions,  fantastic 
or  pregnant  as  the  case  may  finally  prove  to 
be,  we  need  hardly  notice.  The  same  is  true 
concerning  his  copious  exposition  of  literary 


POE  CENTENARY  129 

principle,  superficially  grave,  certainly  ingen- 
ious, perhaps  earnest,  perhaps  impishly  fantas- 
tic. All  of  these,  and  more  too,  would  inevi- 
tably force  themselves  on  our  consideration 
if  we  were  attempting  to  revive  the  Poe  who 
was.  At  this  moment,  however,  we  may  neg- 
lect them  as  serenely  as  we  may  neglect  scru- 
tiny of  outward  and  visible  signs — such  ques- 
tions as  those  of  where  he  lived  and  when  and 
for  how  long,  of  what  he  did  in  his  private 
life,  of  whom  he  made  love  to  and  what  he 
ate  for  dinner,  of  who  cut  his  waistcoats,  and 
of  how — if  at  all — he  paid  for  them.  The 
very  suggestion  of  such  details  may  well  and 
truly  seem  beneath  the  dignity  of  this  moment. 
They  are  forced  into  conscious  recognition 
not  by  any  tinge  of  inherent  value,  but  be- 
:ause  of  the  innocently  intrusive  pedantry 
low  seemingly  inseparable  from  the  ideal  of 
scholarship.  We  have  passed,  for  the  while, 
beyond  the  tyranny  of  that  scholarly  mood 
which  used  to  exhaust  its  energy  in  analysis 
Df  every  word  and  syllable  and  letter  through- 
Dut  the  range  of  literature.  From  sheer  re- 
iction,  I  sometimes  think,  we  are  apt  nowa- 
days, when  concerned  with  letters,  to  pass  our 


130  POE  CENTENARY 

time,  even  less  fruitfully  than  if  we  were  still 
grammarians,  in  researches  little  removed 
from  the  impertinence  of  gossip.  And  gossip 
concerning  memorable  men  and  women  is 
only  a  shade  less  futile  than  gossip  concern- 
ing the  ephemeral  beings  who  flit  across  our 
daily  vision.  So  far  as  it  can  keep  us  awake 
from  superstitious  acceptance  of  superhuman 
myth,  it  may  perhaps  have  its  own  little  salu- 
tary function.  If  it  distract  us  from  such 
moods  of  deeper  sympathy  as  start  the  vagrant 
fancies  of  myth-makers,  it  does  mischief  as 
misleading  as  any  ever  wrought  by  formal 
pedantry,  and  without  the  lingering  grace  of 
traditional  dignity.  Your  truly  sound  schol- 
arship is  concerned  rather  with  such  questions 
as  we  are  properly  concerned  with  here  and 
now.  Its  highest  hope,  in  literary  matters,  is 
to  assert  and  to  maintain  persistent  facts  in 
their  enduring  values.  In  the  case  of  Poe,  for 
example,  its  chief  questions  are  first  of  what 
from  among  his  copious  and  varied  work  has 
incontestably  survived  the  conditions  of  his 
human  environment,  and  secondly  of  why  this 
survival  has  occurred.  What  contribution  did 
Poe  make  to  lasting  literature?  Does  this 


POE  CENTENARY  131 

justly  belong  to  the  literature  of  the  world, 
as  well  as  to  that  of  America?  In  brief,  why 
is  he  so  memorable  as  we  all  acknowledge  by 
our  presence  here  today  ? 

Stated  thus,  these  questions  are  not  very 
hard  to  answer.  The  Poe  of  literature  is  the 
writer  of  a  good  many  tales,  or  short  stories, 
and  of  a  few  intensely  individual,  though  not 
deeply  confidential,  poems.  Stories  and  po- 
ems alike  stand  apart  not  only  from  all  others 
in  the  literature  of  America,  but — I  believe 
we  may  agree — from  any  others  anywhere. 
Some  profoundly,  some  rather  more  superfi- 
cially, they  all  possess,  in  their  due  degree,  an 
impalpable  quality  which  the  most  subtle  of 
us  might  well  be  at  pains  to  define,  but  which 
the  most  insensitive  man  imaginable  can  al- 
ways, surely,  recurrently  feel.  The  most  re- 
markable phase  of  the  impression  they  thus 
make  is  probably  the  complete  and  absolute 
certainty  of  its  recurrence.  Turn,  whenever 
you  will  and  in  whatever  mood,  to  any  of 
Poe's  work  which  has  proved  more  than 
ephemeral.  Tale  or  poem,  it  may  chance  ei- 
ther to  appeal  to  you  or  to  repel  you.  In  one 
mood  you  may  think  it  inspired;  in  another, 


132  POE  CENTENARY 

you  may  find  it  little  better  than  prankishly 
artificial.  You  may  praise  it  until  dissent  gape 
breathless  at  your  superlatives ;  or  you  may  re- 
lentlessly point  out  what  you  are  pleased  to 
believe  its  limitations,  its  artificialities,  its  pat- 
ent defects.  Even  then,  a  very  simple  question 
must  bring  you  to  pause.  Let  anybody  ask 
you  what  this  piece  of  literature  is  like,  or 
what  is  like  it, — let  anybody  ask  with  what 
we  should  match  it.  Whether  you  love  it  or 
are  tempted  to  disdain  it,  you  must  be  forced 
to  the  admission  that  it  is  almost  unique. 
Whatever  its  ultimate  significance,  the  better 
work  of  Poe  remains  altogether  itself,  and 
therefore  altogether  his.  This  gleams  the 
more  vividly  as  you  come  to  recognize  how 
his  individuality  asserts  itself  to  you,  whatever 
your  own  passing  mood,  under  any  imaginable 
.conditions.  The  utterance  of  Poe  is  as  in- 
contestably,  as  triumphantly,  itself  as  is  the 
note  of  a  song  bird — as  poets  abroad  have 
found  the  music  of  the  skylark,  or  of  the 
nightingale,  or  as  our  own  countryfolk  find 
the  call  of  the  whip-poor-will  echoing  through 
the  twilight  of  American  woods. 

His  individuality,  the  while,  is  of  a  kind  for 


POE  CENTENARY  133 

which  our  language  hardly  affords  a  name 
more  exact  than  the  name  poetic.  The  acci- 
dent that  we  are  generally  accustomed  to  con- 
fuse the  spirit  of  poetry  with  some  common 
features  of  poetic  structure  can  mislead  us 
only  for  a  moment.  Poetry  is  not  essentially 
a  matter  of  rhyme  or  meter,  of  measure  and 
quality  in  sound  or  syllable.  The  essence  of 
it  is  not  material  but  spiritual.  There  are  few 
more  comprehensive  descriptions  of  it  than 
the  most  familiar  in  all  English  literature: — 

The  lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet 

Are  of  imagination  all  compact: — 

One  sees  more  devils  than  vast  Hell  can  hold, — 

That  is,  the  madman;  the  lover,  all  as  frantic, 

Sees  Helen's  beauty  in  a  brow  of  Egypt; 

The  poet's  eye,  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 

Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to 

heaven; 

And,  as  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms   of  things  unknown,   the   poet's   pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 

In  all  the  literature  of  America,  and  indeed 
in  all  that  of  the  English  language,  you  will 
be  at  pains  to  point  out  utterances  more  illus- 
trative of  these  lines, — I  had  almost  said  more 
definative, — than  you  shall  find  in  the  tales  and 


134  POE  CENTENARY 

the  poems  of  Poe  at  their  surviving  best.  Mo- 
mentarily illusive  though  his  concrete  touches 
may  sometimes  make  his  tales, — and  he  pos- 
sessed, to  a  rare  degree,  the  power  of  arousing 
"that  willing  suspension  of  disbelief  for  the 
moment  which  constitutes  poetic  faith," — the 
substance  of  his  enduring  phantasies  may  al- 
ways be  reduced  to  the  forms  of  things  un- 
known, bodied  forth  by  sheer  power  of  im- 
agination. To  these  airy  nothings  the  cunning 
of  his  pen,  turning  them  to  shapes,  gives  local 
habitations  and  names  so  distinct  and  so  vivid 
that  now  and  again  you  must  be  at  pains  to 
persuade  yourself  that  in  final  analysis  they 
are  substantially  unreal.  Yet  unreal  they  al- 
ways prove  at  last,  phantasmally  and  haunt- 
ingly  immaterial.  They  are  like  figured  tap- 
estries spun  and  woven,  warp  and  woof,  from 
such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of.  Only  the 
dreams  are  not  quite  our  own.  The  dreamer 
who  has  dreamed  them  is  the  poet  who  has 
woven  them  into  this  fabric,  making  them  now 
forever  ours  as  well  as  his.  Without  his  own 
innermost  life  they  could  never  have  come  into 
being  at  all.  Without  his  consummate  crafts- 
manship, itself  almost  a  miracle,  they  must 


POE  CENTENARY  135 

have  hovered  inexorable  beyond  the  range  of 
all  other  consciousness  than  his  who  dreamed 
them.  Dreamer  and  craftsman  alike,  and  su- 
preme, it  is  he,  and  none  but  he,  who  can  make 
us  feel,  in  certain  most  memorable  phases,  the 
fascinating,  fantastic,  elusive,  incessant  mys- 
tery of  that  which  must  forever  environ  hu- 
man consciousness,  unseen,  unknown,  impal- 
pable, implacable,  undeniable. 

The  mood  we  are  thus  attempting  to  de- 
fine is  bafflingly  elusive;  it  has  no  precise  sub- 
stance, no  organic  or  articulate  form.  It  is 
essentially  a  concept  not  of  reason,  or  even  of 
pervasive  human  emotion,  but  only  of  poetry 
— a  subtly  phantasmal  state  of  spirit,  evocable 
only  by  the  poet  who  has  been  endowed  with 
power  to  call  it  from  the  vasty  deep  where, 
except  for  him,  it  must  have  lurked  forever. 
If  it  were  not  unique,  it  could  not  be  itself; 
for  it  would  not  be  quite  his,  and  whatever  is 
not  quite  his  is  not  his  at  all.  So  much  we 
may  confidently  assert.  And  yet  if  we  should 
permit  ourselves  either  to  rest  with  the  asser- 
tion, or  to  stray  in  fancy  through  conclusion 
after  conclusion  towards  which  it  may  have 
seemed  to  lead  us,  we  should  remain  or  wan- 


136  POE  CENTENARY 

der  mischievously  far  from  the  truth.  That 
Poe's  imagination  was  solitary,  like  so  much 
of  the  circumstances  of  his  life,  we  need  not 
deny  or  dispute.  Clearly,  nevertheless,  he 
lived  his  solitary  life  not  in  some  fantastic 
nowhere,  but  amid  the  familiarly  recorded 
realities  of  these  United  States  of  America, 
during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  is  equally  clear  that  throughout  the  years 
when  his  solitary  poetic  imagination  was 
giving  to  its  airy  nothings  their  local  habita- 
tions and  their  names,  countless  other 
poetic  imaginations,  at  home  and  abroad, 
were  striving  to  do  likewise,  each  in  its  own 
way  and  fashion.  Solitary,  apart,  almost 
defiant  though  the  aspect  of  Poe  may 
have  seemed,  isolated  though  we  may  still 
find  the  records  of  his  life,  or  the  creatures 
of  his  imagination,  he  was  never  anach- 
ronistic. Even  the  visual  image  of  his  rest- 
less presence,  which  we  tried  to  call  up  a 
little  while  ago,  will  prove  on  scrutiny  not 
only  individual,  but  outwardly  cast  in  the 
form  and  the  habit  of  its  own  time — to 
the  very  decade  and  year  of  the  almanac. 
With  his  dreams,  and  with  the  magic  fabrics 


POE  CENTENARY  137 

to  which  he  wrought  them,  the  case  is 
uch  the  same.  Neither  dreams  nor  fabrics, 
ly  more  than  his  bodily  presence,  could  have 
:en  quite  themselves — and  still  less  could 
.e  dreams  and  the  fabrics  have  fused 
•rever  in  their  wondrous  poetic  harmonies — 
iring  any  other  epoch  than  that  wherein 
oe  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being. 
What  I  mean  must  soon  be  evident  if  we 
op  to  seek  a  general  name  for  the  kind 
:  poetical  mood  which  Poe  could  always 
roke  in  so  specific  a  form  and  degree, 
he  word  is  instantly  at  hand,  inexact  and 
in  ting  if  you  will,  but  undeniable.  It  is 
.e  word  which  his  contemporaries  might 
irelessly,  yet  not  untruly,  have  applied  to 
s  personal  appearance,  alluring  to  the  eye 

only  for  the  quiet  defiance  of  his  tem- 
iramental  solitude.  It  is  the  word  by  which 
e  might  most  fitly  have  characterized  such 
ipulsive  curiosity  as  should  have  impelled 
>,  if  we  had  seen  him,  to  inquire  who 
is  mysterious-looking  stranger  might  be. 

is  the  word — misused,  teasing,  elusive — by 
hich  we  are  still  apt  indefinitely  to  define 
le  general  aesthetic  temper  of  his  time,  all 


138  POE  CENTENARY 

over  the  European  and  American  world. 
We  use  it  concerning  all  manner  of  emo- 
tion and  of  conduct,  and  all  phases  of 
literature  or  of  the  other  fine  arts  throughout 
their  whole  protean  ranges  of  expression. 
You  will  have  guessed  already,  long  before 
I  come  to  utter  it,  the  word  thus  hovering 
in  all  our  minds — the  word  romantic. 

If  we  should  hereupon  attempt  formally 
to  define  what  this  familiar  word  means, 
there  would  be  no  hope  left  us.  Turn,  as 
widely  as  you  will,  to  dictionaries,  to  en- 
cyclopaedias, to  volumes,  and  to  libraries 
of  volumes.  Each  may  throw  its  ray  of 
light  on  the  matter;  none  will  completely 
illuminate  it  or  irradiate.  You  might  as  well 
seek  words  which  should  comprehend,  in 
descriptive  finality,  the  full,  delicate,  sensuous 
truth  of  the  savor  of  a  fruit  or  of  the  scent 
of  a  flower.  Yet,  for  all  this,  there  are 
aspects  of  romanticism  on  which  we  may 
helpfully  dwell;  and  of  these  the  first  is  an 
acknowledged  matter  of  history.  Throughout 
all  parts  of  the  world  then  dominated  by 
European  tradition,  the  temper  of  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  strongly 


POE  CENTENARY  139 

romantic.  This  was  nowhere  more  evident 
than  in  the  spontaneous  outburst  of  poetry 
which,  in  less  than  twenty  years,  enriched 
the  roll  of  English  poets  with  the  names 
of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Shelley,  Keats, 
Byron,  and  Scott.  Now  the  way  in  which 
this  period  of  poetry  was  lately  described  in 
an  American  announcement  of  teaching  may 
help  us  to  perceive  with  a  little  more  approach 
to  precision,  one  feature  of  what  ro- 
manticism everywhere  means.  Some  worthy 
professor,  doubtless  chary  of  indefinite  terms, 
chose  to  describe  the  romantic  poets  as 
those  of  the  period  when  the  individual 
spirit  revived  in  English  literature.  Poetic 
or  not,  this  sound  instructor  of  youth  was 
historically  right.  The  very  essence  of  ro- 
manticism lies  in  passionate  assertion  of 
literary  or  artistic  individuality.  Where- 
fore, as  we  can  now  begin  to  feel  sure,  that 
romantic  isolation  of  Poe's  has  double 
significance;  it  not  only  marks  him,  apart 
from  others,  as  individual,  but  it  defines  him, 
at  the  same  time,  as  an  individual  of  his 
own  romantic  period. 

We  shall  not  go  astray,  then,  if  we  ponder 


140  POE  CENTENARY 

for  a  little  while  on  this  whole  romantic 
generation.  Before  long,  we  may  content- 
fully  agree  that  the  individualism  of  the 
romantic  poets  resulted  everywhere  from 
their  passionate  declaration  of  independence 
from  outworn  poetic  authority.  The  precise 
form  of  poetic  authority  from  which  they 
thus  broke  free  was  the  pseudo-classic  tra- 
dition of  the  eighteenth  century — in  matters 
literary  a  period  of  formal  rhetorical  decency, 
and  of  a  cool  common-sense  which  had 
little  mercy  for  the  vagaries  of  uncontrolled 
aesthetic  emotion.  Already  we  may  well 
feel  insecure.  We  are  straying,  beyond  dis- 
pute, into  dangerously  elusive  generalization, 
interminably  debatable.  Yet,  if  our  present 
line  of  thought  is  to  lead  us  anywhere,  we 
must  not  hesitate  to  generalize  more  boldly 
still.  That  same  eighteenth  century,  from 
which  romanticism  broke  free,  was  not  a 
sporadic  and  intensive  episode  in  the  history 
of  European  culture;  it  was  the  culmination 
of  a  period  at  least  five  hundred  years  long. 
This  period  began  when  the  reviving  critical 
scholarship  of  the  Renaissance  brought  back 
to  the  dominant  upper  consciousness  of 


POE  CENTENARY  141 

Europe  vivid  understanding  of  the  facts  of 
classical  antiquity;  and  when,  so  doing,  it 
began  to  suppress  the  vigorous  and  splendid 
body  of  intervening  tradition  and  temper 
to  which  we  have  consequently  given  the 
name  of  mediaeval.  In  matters  literary,  at 
least,  the  spirit  which  began  with  the 
Renaissance  persisted  until  the  Revolution 
of  the  dying  eighteenth  century  prepared  the 
way  for  that  nineteenth  century,  of  romantic 
freedom,  wherein  Poe  lived  and  did  his 
living  work. 

Already  we  can  begin  to  see  that  there 
was  some  analogy  between  the  Middle  Ages, 
which  preceded  the  Renaissance,  and  the 
epoch  of  romanticism  which  ensued  after 
.the  eighteenth  century.  Both  periods,  at 
least,  were  free  each  in  its  own  way  from 
the  intellectual  control  of  such  formal 
classicism  or  pseudo-classicism  as  intervened. 
A  little  closer  scrutiny  of  the  Middle  Ages 
may  therefore  help  us  to  appreciate 
what  nineteenth-century  romanticism  meant. 
Throughout  that  whole  mediaeval  period, 
we  may  soon  agree,  the  intellect  of  Europe 
was  authoritatively  forbidden  to  exert  itself 


142  POE  CENTENARY 

beyond  narrowly  fixed  and  rigid  limit 
European  emotion,  meanwhile,  was  pei 
mitted  vagrant  and  luxuriant  freedom  c 
range  and  of  expression.  It  might  wand* 
wherever  it  would.  In  contrast  with  th 
period,  we  can  now  perceive,  the  Renaissanc 
may  be  conceived  as  an  intellectual  declan 
tion  of  independence;  and  through  a  full  fi\ 
hundred  years,  the  intellect  of  Europe  wa 
increasingly  free.  Its  very  freedom  mad 
it,  in  turn,  tyrannical.  At  least  in  the  mattei 
of  temper  and  of  fashion,  it  repressed,  cor 
trolled,  or  ignored  the  ranges  of  emotio 
which  had  flourished  during  its  subjectioi 
In  literature  its  tyranny  extended  far  an 
wide.  Though  for  awhile  thought  wz 
permitted  to  range  more  or  less  free,  emotio 
was  at  best  sentimentalized.  So,  when  tr. 
centuries  of  tyranny  were  past,  poetry, 
it  were  ever  to  regain  full  freedom  c 
emotional  existence,  to  enjoy  again  the  fir 
frenzy  of  creation,  needed  more  than  ind< 
pendence.  To  revive  the  spirit  which  shoul 
vitally  reanimate  its  enfranchisement  it  neede 
to  drink  again  from  the  fountains  for  whic 
it  had  thirsted  for  centuries;  it  must  reve: 


POE  CENTENARY  143 

something  like  the  unfettered  emotional 
edom  of  the  Middle  Ages.  To  put  the 
e  a  little  more  distinctly,  the  romanticism 

the  nineteenth  century  could  be  its  true 
f  only  when  to  the  intellectual  maturity 
reloped  by  five  centuries  of  classical  culture 
could  add  full  and  eager  sympathy  with 
:  emotional  freedom  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
vitably  ancestral  to  all  modernity.  So 

was  a  profoundly  vital  instinct  which 
ected  the  enthusiasm  of  poets  to  mediaeval 
imes  and  traditions,  even  though  these 
re  imperfectly  understood.  The  inspiration 
•ived  from  them  came  not  so  much  from 
y  detail  of  their  actual  historical  circum- 
nces  as  from  their  instant,  obvious  re- 
>teness  from  the  common-sense  facts  of 
ily  experience — matters  judiciously  to  be 
idled  only  by  the  colorless  activity  of 
ellect.  It  was  remoteness  from  actuality 
tich  above  all  else  made  romantic  your 
nantic  ruins  and  romantic  villains,  your 
nantic  heroines,  your  romantic  passions 
d  your  romantic  aspirations.  Yet  even 
ur  most  romantic  poet  must  give  the  airy 
things  of  his  imagination  a  local  habitation 


144  POE  CENTENARY 

and  a  name.  Unreal  and  fantastic  though 
they  might  be,  they  must  possess  at  least  some 
semblance  of  reality.  And  this  semblance, 
whether  bodily  or  spiritual,  normally  assumed 
a  mediaeval  guise. 

Throughout  Europe  such  semblance  could 
always  be  guided,  controlled,  and  regulated 
by  the  pervasive  presence  everywhere  of 
relics,  material  or  traditional,  of  the  mediaeval 
times  thus  at  length  welcomed  back  to  the 
light.  So  far  as  the  full  romantic  literature 
of  Europe  deals  with  mediaeval  matters, 
accordingly,  or  so  far  as  intentionally  or 
instinctively  it  reverts  to  mediaeval  temper, 
it  has  a  kind  of  solidity  hardly  to  be  found 
in  the  poetic  utterance  of  its  contemporary 
America.  For,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  America  was  not  only 
consciously  further  than  Europe  from  all 
the  common  roots  of  our  ancestral  humanity; 
it  possessed  hardly  a  line  of  what  is  now  ac- 
cepted as  our  national  literature.  As  patriots 
and  as  men  of  their  time,  the  poets  of  America 
were  called  on  to  add  their  part  to  romantic 
expression.  To  give  their  expression  sem- 
blance of  reality  they  had  no  mediaeval  relics 


POE  CENTENARY  145 

to  guide  them,  nor  enduring  local  traditions, 
thick  and  strong  about  them.  They  were 
compelled  to  rely  on  sheer  force  of  creative 
imagination.  Pretentious  as  that  phrase  may 
sound,  it  is  animated  by  a  spirit  of  humility. 
Its  purpose  is  in  no  wise  to  claim  superiority 
for  the  romantic  literary  achievement  of  our 
country.  It  is  rather,  by  stating  the  magni- 
tude of  our  national  task,  to  explain  ouf 
comparative  lack  of  robust  solidity,  and  to 
indicate  why  the  peculiar  note  of  our  country 
must  inevitably  have  been  a  note  of  singular, 
though  not  necessarily  of  powerful,  creative 
purity. 

Now  just  such  creative  purity  is  evidently 
characteristic  of  Poe.  It  may  sometimes 
have  seemed  that  among  our  eminent  men 
of  letters  he  is  the  least  obviously  American. 
A  little  while  ago,  indeed,  when  I  again 
turned  through  all  the  pages  of  his  collected 
works,  I  was  freshly  surprised  to  find 
how  little  explicit  trace  they  bore  of  the 
precise  environment  where  they  were  written. 
Throughout  all  their  length,  it  seemed,  there 
was  not  a  single  complete  page  on  which  a 
stranger  might  rest  proof  that  it  had  come 


146  POE  CENTENARY 

to  the  light  in  this  country.  The  first  ex- 
ample which  occurs  to  me — it  happens  to  be 
also  the  most  generally  familiar — will  show 
what  I  have  in  mind:  the  mysterious  chamber 
where  the  Raven  forces  uncanny  entrance  is 
not  American.  The  image  of  it  originated, 
I  believe,  in  a  room  still  pointed  out.  Yet, 
so  far  as  the  atmosphere  of  it  is  concerned, 
that  room  might  have  been  anywhere;  or 
rather,  as  it  lives  far  and  wide,  it  is  surely 
nowhere.  Yet,  all  the  while,  it  has  strange 
semblance  of  reality.  What  is  true  here  proves 
true  throughout.  The  Paris  of  Poe's  detective 
stories  is  no  real  Paris;  the  House  of  Usher 
never  stood,  or  fell,  on  any  earthly  continent; 
Poe's  maelstrom  whirls  as  fantastic  as  the 
balloon  or  the  moon  of  Hans  Pfaal.  One 
might  go  on  unceasingly,  recalling  at  random 
impression  after  impression,  vivid  as  the  mosl 
vivid  of  dreams,  and  always  as  impalpable. 
There  is  nowhere  else  romantic  fantasy  so 
securely  remote  from  all  constraining  taint  oi 
literal  reality;  there  is  none  anywhere  more 
unconditioned  in  its  creative  freedom.  And 
thus,  paradoxical  though  the  thought  may  al 
first  seem,  Poe  tacitly,  but  clearly  and  tri- 


POE  CENTENARY  147 

iphantly,  asserts  his  nationality.  No  other 
nanticism  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
:r  so  serenely  free  from  limitation  of  ma- 
ial  condition  and  tradition;  none,  therefore, 
s  so  indisputably  what  the  native  roman- 
sm  of  America  must  inevitably  have  been. 
11  his  work  significant,  if  you  like,  or  call 
unmeaning;  decide  that  it  is  true  or  false, 
you  will,  in  ethical  or  artistic  purpose. 
>thing  can  alter  its  wondrous  independence 
all  but  deliberately  accepted  artistic  limita- 
is.  In  this  supreme  artistic  purity  lies  not 
y  the  chief  secret  of  its  wide  appeal,  but 
the  same  time  the  subtle  trait  which  marks 
is  the  product  of  its  own  time,  and  of  its 
n  time  nowhere  else  than  here  in  America, 
•  common  country. 

\merican  though  Poe's  utterance  be,  the 
ile,  it  stays  elusive.  When  one  tries  to 
>up  it  with  any  other  utterance  of  his  time, 
;  feels  again  and  afresh  the  impression  of 
temperamental  solitude.  This  solitude  is 
from  prophetic  or  austere;  it  is  as  remote 
possible  from  that  of  a  voice  crying  in 
:  wilderness.  Nor  indeed  was  America,  in 
e's  time,  any  longer  a  wilderness  wherein 


148  POE  CENTENARY 

a  poet  should  seem  a  stranger.  Even  though 
when  the  nineteenth  century  began  there  was 
hardly  such  a  thing  as  literature  in  America, 
the  years  of  Poe's  life  brought  us  rather 
copiousness  than  dearth  of  national  expres- 
sion. As  a  New  Englander,  for  example,  I 
may  perhaps  be  pardoned  for  reminding  you 
that  in  the  year  1830  Boston  could  not  have 
shown  you  a  single  enduring  volume  to  dem- 
onstrate that  it  was  ever  to  be  a  centre  of 
purely  literary  importance.  Twenty  years 
later,  when  Poe  died,  the  region  of  Boston 
had  already  produced,  in  pure  literature,  the 
fully  developed  characters,  though  not  yet  the 
complete  and  rounded  work,  of  Emerson,  and 
Longfellow,  and  Lowell,  and  Holmes,  and 
Whittier  and  Hawthorne.  For  the  moment, 
I  call  this  group  to  mind  only  that  we  may 
more  clearly  perceive  the  peculiar  individuality 
of  Poe.  In  many  aspects,  each  of  the  New 
England  group  was  individual,  enough  and 
to  spare;  no  one  who  ever  knew  them  could 
long  confuse  one  with  another.  Yet  individual 
though  they  were,  none  of  them  ever  seems 
quite  solitary  or  isolated.  You  rarely  think 
of  any  among  them  as  standing  apart  from 


POE  CENTENARY  149 

the  rest,  nor  yet  from  the  historical,  the  social, 
the  religious  or  the  philosophic  conditions 
which  brought  them  all  to  the  point  of  poetic 
utterance.  Now  Poe  was  in  every  sense  their 
contemporary;  yet  the  moment  you  gladly 
yield  yourself  to  the  contagion  of  his  poetic 
sympathy,  you  find  yourself  alone  with  him — 
aesthetically  solitary.  You  might  fancy  your- 
self for  the  while  fantastically  disembodied — 
a  waking  wanderer  in  some  region  of  un- 
alloyed dreams.  American  though  he  be, 
beyond  perad venture,  and  a  man  of  his  time 
as  well,  he  proves  beyond  all  other  Americans 
throughout  the  growingly  illustrious  roll  of 
our  national  letters,  resistant  to  all  imprison- 
ment within  any  classifying  formula  which 
should  surely  include  any  other  than  his  own 
haunting  and  fascinating  self. 

This  isolation  might  at  first  seem  a  token 
of  weakness.  For  enduring  as  the  fascination 
of  Poe  must  forever  be, — even  to  those  who 
strive  to  resist  it  and  give  us  dozens  of  wise 
pages  to  prove  him  undeserving  of  such  atten- 
tion,— the  most  ardent  of  his  admirers  can 
hardly  maintain  his  work  to  be  dominant  or 
commanding,  Except  for  the  pleasure  it  gives 


150  POE  CENTENARY 

you,  it  leaves  you  little  moved;  it  does  not 
meddle  with  your  philosophy,  or  modify  your 
rules  of  conduct.  Its  power  lies  altogether 
in  the  strange  excellence  of  its  peculiar  beauty. 
And  even  though  the  most  ethical  poet  of 
his  contemporary  New  England  has  immor- 
tally assured  us  that  beauty  is  its  own  excuse 
for  being,  we  can  hardly  forget  that  Emerson's 
aphorism  sprang  from  contemplation  of  a  wild 
flower,  in  the  exquisite  perfection  of  ephemeral 
fragility.  A  slight  thing  some  might  thus 
come  to  fancy  the  isolated  work  of  Poe — the 
poet  of  nineteenth  century  America  whose 
spirit  hovered  most  persistently  remote  from 
actuality. 

If  such  mood  should  threaten  to  possess  us, 
even  for  a  little  while,  the  concourse  here 
gathered  together  should  surely  set  us  free. 
That  spirit  which  hovered  aloof  sixty  and 
seventy  years  ago  is  hovering  still.  It  shall 
hover,  we  can  now  confidently  assert,  through 
centuries  unending.  The  solitude  of  weak- 
ness, or  of  fragility  is  no  such  solitude  as 
this;  weak  and  fragile  solitude  vanishes  with 
its  earthly  self,  leaving  no  void  behind.  Soli- 
tude which  endures  as  Poe's  is  enduring 


POE  CENTENARY  151 

proves  itself  by  the  very  tenacity  of  its  endur- 
ance to  be  the  solitude  of  unflagging  and  in- 
dependent strength.  Such  strength  as  this  is 
sure  token  of  poetic  greatness.  We  may  grow 
more  confident  than  ever.  We  may  unhesi- 
tatingly assert  Poe  not  only  American,  but 
great. 

And  now  we  come  to  one  further  question, 
nearer  to  us,  as  fellow-countrymen,  than  those 
on  which  we  have  touched  before.  It  is  the 
question  of  just  where  the  enduring  work  of 
this  great  American  poet  should  be  placed  in 
the  temperamental  history  of  our  country — 
of  just  what  phase  it  may  be  held  to  express 
of  the  national  spirit  of  America. 

That  national  spirit — the  spirit  which  ani- 
mates and  inspires  the  life  of  our  native  land — 
has  had  a  solemn  and  a  tragic  history.  From 
the  very  beginning  of  our  national  growth, 
historic  circumstance  at  once  prevented  any 
spiritual  centralization  of  our  national  life, 
and  encouraged  in  diverse  regions,  equally  es- 
sential to  the  completeness  of  our  national 
existence,  separate  spiritual  centers,  each  true 
to  itself  and  for  that  very  reason  defiant  of 
others.  So  far  as  the  separate  phases  of  our 


152  POE  CENTENARY 

national  spirit  have  ever  been  able  to  meet 
one  another  open-hearted,  they  have  marvelled 
to  know  the  true  depth  of  their  communion. 
But  open-hearted  meeting  has  not  always  been 
possible.  And  throughout  the  nineteenth  cen* 
tury — the  century  in  which  Poe  lived  and 
wrought — it  was  hardly  possible  at  all. 
Americans  were  brethren,  as  they  were 
brethren  before,  as  they  are  brethren  now,  as 
they  shall  stay  brethren,  God  willing,  through 
centuries  to  come.  For  the  while,  however, 
their  brotherhood  was  sadly  turbulent.  They 
believed  that  they  spoke  a  common  language. 
The  accents  of  it  sounded  familiar  to  the  ears 
of  all.  Yet  the  meanings  which  those  accents 
were  bidden  to  carry  seemed  writhed  into 
distortion  on  their  way  to  the  very  ears  which 
were  straining  to  catch  them.  It  was  an 
epoch,  we  must  sadly  grant,  of  a  Babel  of 
the  spirit. 

So,  throughout  Poe's  time,  there  was  hardly 
one  among  the  many  whom  the  time  held 
greater  than  he  to  whose  voice  the  united 
spirit  of  our  country  could  ever  unhesitatingly 
and  harmoniously  respond.  What  I  have  in 
mind  may  well  have  occurred  to  you,  of  Vir- 


POE  CENTENARY  153 

ginia,  when  a  little  while  ago  I  named  the 
six  chief  literary  worthies  of  nineteenth  cen- 
tury New  England.  They  were  contem- 
poraries of  Poe.  They  were  honest  men  and 
faithful  poets.  They  never  hesitated  to  utter, 
with  all  their  hearts,  what  they  devotedly  be- 
lieved to  be  the  truth.  And  every  one  of  them 
was  immemorially  American.  Not  one  of 
them  cherished  any  ancestral  tradition  but  was 
native  to  this  country,  since  the  far-off  days 
of  King  Charles  the  First.  In  every  one  of 
them,  accordingly,  any  American — North  or 
South,  East  or  West — must  surely  find  utter- 
ances heroically  true  to  the  idealism  ances- 
trally and  peculiarly  our  own.  Yet  it  would 
be  mischievous  folly  to  pretend  that  such  utter- 
ances, speaking  for  us  all,  can  ever  tell  the 
whole  story  of  the  New  England  poets.  They 
were  not  only  Americans,  as  we  all  are;  they 
were  Americans  of  nineteenth  century  New 
England.  As  such  they  could  not  have  been 
the  honest  men  they  were  if  they  had  failed 
to  concern  themselves  passionately  with  the 
irrepressible  disputes  and  conflicts  of  their 
tragic  times.  They  could  not  so  concern  them- 
selves without  utterance  after  utterance  fatally 


154  POE  CENTENARY 

sure  to  provoke  passionate  response,  or  pas- 
sionate revulsion  in  fellow-countrymen  of 
traditions  other  than  their  own. 

Even  this  sad  truth  hardly  includes  the 
limitation  of  their  localism.  Turn  to  their 
quieter  passages,  descriptive  or  gently  an- 
ecdotic. Strong,  simple,  sincere,  admirable 
though  these  be,  they  are  themselves,  we  must 
freely  grant,  chiefly  because  they  could  have 
been  made  nowhere  else  than  just  where  they 
were.  In  New  England,  for  example,  there 
was  never  a  native  human  being  who  could 
fail  to  recognize  in  "Snow  Bound"  a  genuine 
utterance  straight  from  the  stout  heart  of  his 
own  people ;  nor  yet  one,  I  believe,  who,  smile 
though  he  might  at  his  own  sentimentality, 
could  resist  the  appeal  of  the  "Village  Black- 
smith." But  we  may  well  doubt  whether  any 
Southern  reader,  in  those  old  times,  could  have 
helped  feeling  that  these  verses — as  surely  as 
those  of  Burns,  let  us  say,  or  of  Wordsworth 
— came  from  other  regions  than  those  familiar 
to  his  daily  life. 

The  literature  of  New  England,  in  brief, 
American  though  we  may  all  gladly  assert  it 
in  its  nobler  phases,  is  first  of  all  not  American 


POE  CENTENARY  155 

or  national,  but  local.  What  is  thus  true  of 
New  England  is  generally  true,  I  believe,  of 
literary  expression  throughout  America.  Turn, 
if  you  will,  to  the  two  memorable  writers  ot 
New  York  during  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century — Washington  Irving  and 
James  Fenimore  Cooper.  They  were  good 
men,  and  honest  men  of  letters,  and  admirable 
story-tellers.  Neither  of  them,  however, 
wasted  any  love  on  his  neighbors  a  little  to 
the  eastward;  both  hated  the  unwinsome  sur- 
face of  decadent  Puritanism;  and  neither  un- 
derstood the  mystic  fervor  of  the  Puritan 
spirit.  So,  even  to 'this  day,  a  sensitive  reader 
in  New  England  will  now  and  again  discover, 
in  Irving  or  in  Cooper,  passages  or  turns  of 
phrases  which  shall  still  set  his  blood  faintly 
tingling  with  resentment.  Whatever  the  posi- 
tive merit,  whatever  the  sturdy  honesty  of 
most  American  expression  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  it  lacked  conciliatory  breadth  of  feel- 
ing. Its  intensity  of  localism  marks  it,  what- 
ever the  peacefulness  of  its  outward  guise,  as 
the  utterance  of  a  fatally  discordant  time. 

Now  it  is  from  this  same  discordant  time 
that  the  works  of  Poe  have  come  down  to  us ; 


156  POE  CENTENARY 

and  no  work  could  have  been  much  less  in- 
spired by  the  local  traditions  and  temper  of 
New  England.  To  his  vagrant  and  solitary 
spirit,  indeed,  those  traditions  must  have  been 
abhorrent.  New  England  people,  too,  would 
probably  have  liked  him  as  little  as  he  liked 
them.  You  might  well  expect  that  even  now, 
when  the  younger  generations  of  New  Eng- 
land turn  to  his  tales  or  his  poems,  sparks  of 
resentment  might  begin  to  rekindle.  In  one 
sense,  perhaps,  they  may  seem  to;  for  Poe's 
individuality  is  too  intense  for  universal  ap- 
peal. You  will  find  readers  in  New  England, 
just  as  you  will  find  readers  elsewhere,  who 
stay  deaf  to  the  haunting  music  of  his  verse, 
and  blind  to  the  wreathing  films  of  his  un- 
earthly fantasy.  Such  lack  of  sympathy,  how- 
ever, you  will  never  find  to  be  a  matter  of 
ancestral  tradition  or  of  local  prejudice  or  of 
sectional  limitation;  it  will  prove  wholly  and 
unconditionally  to  be  only  a  matter  of  in- 
dividual temperament.  Among  the  enduring 
writers  of  nineteenth  century  America,  Poe 
stands  unique.  Inevitably  of  his  country  and 
of  his  time,  he  eludes  all  limitation  of  more 
narrow  scope  or  circumstance.  Of  all,  I  be- 


POE  CENTENARY  157 

lieve,  he  is  the  only  one  to  whom,  in  his  own 
day,  all  America  might  confidently  have 
turned,  as  all  America  may  confidently  turn 
still,  and  forever,  with  certainty  of  finding 
no  line,  no  word,  no  quiver  of  thought  or  of 
feeling  which  should  arouse  or  revive  the  con- 
sciousness or  the  memory  of  our  tragic 
national  discords,  now  happily  for  all  of  us 
heroic  matters  of  the  past.  The  more  'we 
dwell  on  the  enduring  work  of  this  great 
American  poet,  the  more  clearly  this  virtue 
of  it  must  shine  before  us  all.  In  the  temper- 
amental history  of  our  country,  it  is  he,  and 
he  alone,  as  yet,  who  is  not  local  but  surely 
enduringly  national  in  the  full  range  of  his 
appeal. 

As  I  thus  grow  to  reverence  in  him  a 
wondrous  harbinger  of  American  spiritual  re- 
union, I  find  hovering  in  my  fancy  some  lines 
of  his  which,  once  heard,  can  never  be  quite 
forgotten.  To  him,  I  believe,  they  must  have 
seemed  only  a  thing  of  beauty.  He  would 
have  been  impatient  of  the  suggestion  that 
any  one  should  ever  read  into  them  the  prose 
of  deeper  significance.  It  was  song,  and  only 


158  POE  CENTENARY 

song,  which  possessed  him,  when  he  wrote  the 
words — • 

If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 
While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky. 

And  yet  is  it  too  much  to  fancy  that  to-day 
we  can  hear  that  bolder  note  swelling  about 
us  as  we  meet  in  communion?  None  could 
be  purer,  none  more  sweet.  And  none  could 
more  serenely  help  to  resolve  the  discords 
of  his  fellow-countrymen  into  enduring  har- 
mony. 


POE  CENTENARY  159 

Dr.  C.  Alphonso  Smith,  of  the  University 
of  North  Carolina,  spoke  on  "The  Ameri- 
canism of  Poe :" 

The  continental  tributes  to  Poe  which  were 
read  this  morning  recalled  an  incident  in 
which  the  name  of  the  founder  of  this  Uni- 
versity and  the  name  of  its  most  illustrious 
son  were  suggestively  linked  together.  In 
the  Latin  Quarter  of  Paris  it  was  my  fortune 
to  be  thrown  for  some  time  into  intimate  com- 
panionship with  a  young  Roumanian  named 
Toma  Draga.  He  had  come  fresh  from 
Roumania  to  the  University  of  Paris  and  was 
all  aflame  with  stimulant  plans  and  ideals  for 
the  growth  of  liberty  and  literature  in  his 
native  land.  His  trunk  was  half  rilled  with 
Roumanian  ballads  which  he  had  collected 
and  in  part  rewritten  and  which  he  wished  to 
have  published  in  Paris  as  his  contribution  to 
the  new  movement  which  was  already  revolu- 
tionizing the  politics  and  the  native  literature 
of  his  historic  little  motherland.  He  knew  not 
a  word  of  English  but  his  knowledge  of 
French  gave  him  a  sort  of  eclectic  familiarity 
with  world  literature  in  general.  Shakespeare 


160  POE  CENTENARY 

he  knew  well,  but  the  two  names  that  were 
most  often  on  his  lips  were  the  names  of 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
Time  and  again  he  quoted  in  his  impassioned 
way  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
poems  of  Poe  with  an  enthusiasm  and  sense 
of  personal  indebtedness  that  will  remain  to 
me  as  an  abiding  inspiration. 

Let  the  name  of  Toma  Draga  stand  as  evi- 
dence that  the  significance  of  genius  is  not  ex- 
hausted by  the  written  tributes  of  great 
scholars  and  critics,  however  numerous  or 
laudatory  these  may  be.  There  is  an  ever- 
widening  circle  of  aspiring  spirits  who  do  not 
put  into  studied  phrase  the  formal  measure 
of  their  indebtedness  but  whose  hands  have 
received  the  unflickering  torch  and  whose 
hearts  know  from  whence  it  came.  And  let 
the  names  of  Jefferson  and  Poe,  whose  far- 
flung  battle-lines  intersected  on  this  campus, 
forever  remind  us  that  this  University  is  dedi- 
cated not  to  the  mere  routine  of  recitation 
rooms  and  laboratories  but  to  the  emancipa- 
tion of  those  mighty  constructive  forces  that 
touch  the  spirits  of  men  to  finer  aspirations 
and  mould  their  aspirations  to  finer  issues. 


POE  CENTENARY  161 

In  an  address  delivered  at  the  exercises  at- 
tending the  unveiling  of  the  Zolnay  bust  of 
Poe,  Mr.  Hamilton  W.  Mabie  declared  that 
Poe  alone,  among  men  of  his  eminence,  could 
not  have  been  foreseen.  "It  is,"  said  he,  "the 
first  and  perhaps  the  most  obvious  distinction 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  that  his  creative  work 
baffles  all  attempts  to  relate  it  historically  to 
antecedent  condition;  that  it  detached  itself 
almost  completely  from  the  time  and  place 
in  which  it  made  its  appearance,  and  sprang 
suddenly  and  mysteriously  from  a  soil  which 
had  never  borne  its  like  before."  That  Mr. 
Mabie  has  here  expressed  the  current  concep- 
tion of  Poe  and  his  work  will  be  conceded  by 
every  one  who  is  at  all  in  touch  with  the  vast 
body  of  Poe  literature  that  has  grown  up  since 
the  poet's  death.  He  is  regarded  as  the  great 
declasse  of  American  literature,  a  solitary 
figure,  denationalized  and  almost  dehuman- 
ized, not  only  unindebted  to  his  Southern  en- 
vironment but  unrelated  to  the  larger  Ameri- 
can background, — in  a  word,  a  man  without  a 
country. 

My  own  feeling  about  Poe  has  always  been 
different,  and  the  recent  edition  of  the  poet's 


162  POE  CENTENARY 

works  by  Professor  James  A.  Harrison,  re- 
producing almost  four  volumes  of  Poe's 
literary  criticism  hitherto  inaccessible,  has  con- 
firmed a  mere  impression  into  a  settled  con- 
viction. The  criticism  of  the  future  will  not 
impeach  the  primacy  of  Poe's  genius  but  will 
dwell  less  upon  detachment  from  surround- 
ings and  more  upon  the  practical  and  repre- 
sentative quality  of  his  work. 

The  relatedness  of  a  writer  to  his  environ- 
ment and  to  his  nationality  does  not  consist 
primarily  in  his  fidelity  to  local  landscape  or 
in  the  accuracy  with  which  he  portrays  rep- 
resentative characters.  Byron  and  Browning 
are  essentially  representative  of  their  time  and 
as  truly  English  as  Wordsworth,  though  the 
note  of  locality  in  the  narrower  sense  is  negli- 
gible in  the  works  of  both.  They  stood,  how- 
ever, for  distinctive  tendencies  of  their  time. 
They  interpreted  these  tendencies  in  essen- 
tially English  terms  and  thus  both  receptively 
and  actively  proclaimed  their  nationality.  If 
we  judge  Poe  by  the  purely  physical  standards 
of  locale,  he  belongs  nowhere.  His  native 
land  lies  east  of  the  sun  and  west  of  the  moon. 
His  nationality  will  be  found  as  indeterminate 


POE  CENTENARY  163 

as  that  of  a  fish,  and  his  impress  of  locality  no 
more  evident  than  that  of  a  bird.  No  land- 
scape that  he  ever  sketched  could  be  identified 
and  no  character  that  he  ever  portrayed  had 
real  human  blood  in  his  veins.  The  repre- 
sentative quality  in  Poe's  work  is  to  be  sought 
neither  in  his  note  of  locality,  nor  in  the 
topics  which  he  preferred  to  treat,  nor  in  his 
encompassing  atmosphere  of  terror,  despair, 
and  decay.  But  the  man  could  not  have  so 
profoundly  influenced  the  literary  craftsman- 
ship of  his  own  period  and  of  succeeding 
periods  if  he  had  not  in  a  way  summarized 
the  tendencies  of  his  age  and  organized  them 
into  finer  literary  form. 

If  one  lobe  of  Poe's  brain  was  pure  ideality, 
haunted  by  specters,  the  other  was  pure  intel- 
lect, responsive  to  the  literary  demands  of  his 
day  and  adequate  to  their  fulfillment.  It  was 
this  lobe  of  his  brain  that  made  him  not  the 
broadest  thinker  but  the  greatest  constructive 
force  in  American  literature.  He  thought  in 
terms  of  structure,  for  his  genius  was  essen- 
tially structural.  In  the  technique  of  effective 
expression  he  sought  for  ultimate  principles 
with  a  patience  and  persistence  worthy  of 


164  POE  CENTENARY 

Washington;  he  brought  to  his  poems  and 
short  stories  an  economy  of  words  and  a  hus- 
bandry of  details  that  suggest  the  thriftiness 
of  Franklin ;  and  he  both  realized  and  supplied 
the  structural  needs  of  his  day  with  a  native 
insight  and  inventiveness  that  proclaim  him  of 
the  line  of  Edison. 

The  central  question  with  Poe  was  not 
"How  may  I  write  a  beautiful  poem  or  tell 
an  interesting  story?"  but  "How  may  I  pro- 
duce the  maximum  of  effect  with  the  minimum 
of  means?"  This  practical,  scientific  strain  in 
his  work  becomes  more  and  more  dominating 
during  all  of  his  short  working  period.  His 
poems,  his  stories,  and  his  criticisms  cannot 
be  thoroughly  understood  without  constant 
reference  to  this  criterion  of  craftsmanship. 
It  became  the  foundation  stone  on  which  he 
built  his  own  work  and  the  touchstone  by 
which  he  tested  the  work  of  others.  It  was 
the  first  time  in  our  history  that  a  mind  so 
keenly  analytic  had  busied  itself  with  the 
problems  of  literary  technique.  And  yet  Poe 
was  doing  for  our  literature  only  what  others 
around  him  were  doing  or  attempting  to  do 
in  the  domain  of  political  and  industrial 


POE  CENTENARY  165 

efficiency.  The  time  was  ripe,  and  the  note 
that  he  struck  was  both  national  and  inter- 
national. 

Professor  Miinsterberg,1  of  Harvard,  thus 
characterizes  the  intellectual  qualities  of  the 
typical  American:  "The  intellectual  make-up 
of  the  American  is  especially  adapted  to 
scientific  achievements.  This  temperament, 
owing  to  the  historical  development  of  the 
nation,  has  so  far  addressed  itself  to  political, 
industrial,  and  judicial  problems,  but  a  return 
to  theoretical  science  has  set  in;  and  there, 
most  of  all,  the  happy  combination  of  inven- 
tiveness, enthusiasm,  and  persistence  in  pur- 
suit of  a  goal,  of  intellectual  freedom  and  of 
idealistic  instinct  for  self-perfection  will  yield, 
perhaps  soon,  remarkable  triumphs."  He 
might  have  added  that  these  qualities  may  be 
subsumed  under  the  general  term  of  construct- 
iveness  and  that  more  than  a  half  century 
ago  they  found  an  exemplar  in  Edgar  Allan 
Poe. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact,  and  one  not  suffi- 
ciently emphasized,  that  Poe's  unique  influ- 
ence at  home  and  abroad  has  been  a  structural 

1.   In  "The  Americans,"  p.  428. 


166  POE  CENTENARY 

influence  rather  than  a  thought  influence.  He 
has  not  suggested  new  themes  to  literary 
artists,  nor  can  his  work  be  called  a  criticism 
of  life;  but  he  has  taught  prose  writers  new 
methods  of  effectiveness  in  building  their  plots, 
in  handling  their  backgrounds,  in  developing 
their  situations,  and  in  harmonizing  their  de- 
tails to  a  preordained  end.  He  has  taught 
poets  how  to  modulate  their  cadences  to  the 
most  delicately  calculated  effects,  how  to  re- 
enforce  the  central  mood  of  their  poems  by 
repetition  and  parallelism  of  phrase,  how  to 
shift  their  tone-color,  how  to  utilize  sound- 
symbolism,  how  to  evoke  strange  memories 
by  the  mere  succession  of  vowels,  so  that  the 
simplest  stanza  may  be  steeped  in  a  music  as 
compelling  as  an  incantation  and  as  cunningly 
adapted  to  the  end  in  view.  The  word  that 
most  fitly  characterizes  Poe's  constructive  art 
is  the  word  convergence.  There  are  no  parallel 
lines  in  his  best  work.  With  the  opening 
sentence  the  lines  begin  to  converge  toward 
the  predetermined  effect.  This  is  Poe's  great- 
est contribution  to  the  craftsmanship  of  his 
art. 

Among  foreign  dramatists  and  prose  writers 


POE  CENTENARY  167 

whose  structural  debt  to  Poe  is  confessed  or 
unquestioned  may  be  mentioned  Victorien 
Sardou,  Theophile  Gautier,  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant, Edmond  About,  Jules  Verne,  Emile 
Gaboriau,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Rudyard 
Kipling,  Hall  Caine,  and  Conan  Doyle.  In 
English  poetry  the  debt  is  still  greater.  "Poe 
has  proved  himself,"  says  the  English  poet- 
critic  Gosse,  "to  be  the  Piper  of  Hamelin  to 
all  later  English  poets.  From  Tennyson  to 
Austin  Dobson  there  is  hardly  one  whose  verse 
music  does  not  show  traces  of  Poe's  influence." 
A  German  critic,2  after  a  masterly  review  of 
Poe's  work,  declares  that  he  has  put  upon 
English  poetry  the  stamp  of  classicism,  that  he 
has  infused  into  it  Greek  spirit  and  Greek 
taste,  that  he  has  constructed  artistic  metrical 
forms  of  which  the  English  language  had  not 
hitherto  been  deemed  capable. 

But  the  greatest  tribute  to  Poe's  constructive 
genius  is  that  both  by  theory  and  practice  he 
is  the  acknowledged  founder  of  the  American 
short  story  as  a  distinct  literary  type.  Pro- 

2.  Edmund  Giindel  in  "Edgar  Allan  Poe:  ein 
Beitrag  zur  Kenntnis  und  Wiirdigung  des  Dichters," 
Freiberg,  1895,  page  28. 


168  POE  CENTENARY 

fessor  Brander  Matthews3  goes  further  and 
asserts  that  "Poe  first  laid  down  the  principles 
which  governed  his  own  construction  and 
which  have  been  quoted  very  often,  because 
they  have  been  accepted  by  the  masters  of  the 
short  story  in  every  modern  language."  It 
seems  more  probable,  however,  that  France 
and  America  hit  upon  the  new  form  inde- 
pendently,4 and  that  the  honor  of  influencing 
the  later  short  stories  of  England,  Germany, 
Russia,  and  Scandinavia  belongs  as  much  to 
French  writers  as  to  Poe. 

The  growth  of  Poe's  constructive  sense 
makes  a  study  of  rare  interest.  He  had  been 
editor  of  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger 

3.  See  "The  Short-Story:     Specimens  Illustrating 
Its  Development,"  1907,  page  25. 

4.  "'La  Morte  Amoureuse'    [by  Gautier],  though 
it  has  not  Poe's  mechanism  of  compression,  is  other- 
wise so  startlingly  like  Poe  that  one  turns  involun- 
tarily to  the  dates.     'La  Morte  Amoureuse'  appeared 
in  1836;  'Berenice,'  in   1835.     The  Southern  Literary 
Messenger   could   not   have    reached    the    boulevards 
in  a  year.     Indeed,  the  debt  of  either  country  to  the 
other  can  hardly  be  proved.     Remarkable  as  is  the 
coincident  appearance  in  Paris  and  in  Richmond  of 
a  new  literary  form,  it  remains  a  coincidence." — In- 
troduction   to    Professor    Charles    Sears    Baldwin's 
"American    Short    Stories"    (in    the    Wampum    Li- 
brary), 1904,  page  33. 


POE  CENTENARY  169 

only  two  months  when  in  comparing  the 
poems  of  Mrs.  Sigourney  and  Mrs.  Hemans 
he  used  a  phrase  in  which  he  may  be  said  to 
have  first  found  himself  structurally.  This 
phrase  embodied  potentially  his  distinctive 
contribution  to  the  literary  technique  of  his 
day.  "In  pieces  of  less  extent,"  he  writes,5 
"like  the  poems  of  Mrs.  Sigourney,  the 
pleasure  is  unique,  in  the  proper  acceptation 
of  that  term — the  understanding  is  employed, 
without  difficulty,  in  the  contemplation  of 
the  picture  as  a  whole — and  thus  its  effect 
will  depend,  in  a  very  great  degree,  upon  the 
perfection  of  its  finish,  upon  the  nice  adap- 
tation of  its  constituent  parts,  and  especially 
upon  what  is  rightly  termed  by  Schlegel  the 
unity  or  totality  of  interest."  Further  on  in 
the  same  paragraph  he  substitutes  "totality 
of  effect." 

Six  years  later6  he  published  his  now 
famous  criticism  of  Hawthorne's  "Twice- 
Told  Tales,"  a  criticism  that  contains,  in 
one  oft-quoted  paragraph,  the  constitution 
of  the  modern  short  story  as  distinct  from 

5.  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  January,  1836. 

6.  In  Graham's  Magazine,  May,  1842. 


170  POE  CENTENARY 

the  story  that  is  merely  short.  After  calling 
attention  to  the  "immense  force  derivable 
from  totality,"  he  continues:  "A  skillful 
literary  artist  has  constructed  a  tale.  If 
wise,  he  has  not  fashioned  his  thoughts  to 
accommodate  his  incidents;  but  having  con- 
ceived, with  deliberate  care,  a  certain  unique 
or  single  effect  to  be  wrought  out,  he  then 
invents  such  incidents, — he  then  combines 
such  events  as  may  best  aid  him  in  establishing 
this  preconceived  effect.  If  his  very  initial 
sentence  tend  not  to  the  outbringing  of  this 
effect,  then  he  has  failed  in  his  first  step.  In 
the  whole  composition  there  should  be  no 
word  written,  of  which  the  tendency,  direct 
or  indirect,  is  not  to  the  one  preestablished 
design.  And  by  such  means,  with  such  care 
and  skill,  a  picture  is  at  length  painted  which 
leaves  in  the  mind  of  him  who  contemplates 
it  with  a  kindred  art,  a  sense  of  the  fullest 
satisfaction.  The  idea  of  the  tale  has  been 
presented  unblemished,  because  undisturbed; 
and  this  is  an  end  unattainable  by  the  novel." 
In  1846  he  publishes  his  "Philosophy  of 
Composition"7  in  which  he  analyzes  the 

7.  In  the  April  number  of  Graham's  Magazine. 


POE  CENTENARY  171 

structure  of  "The  Raven"  and  declares  that 
he  confined  the  poem  to  about  one  hundred 
lines  so  as  to  secure  "the  vastly  important 
artistic  element,  totality  or  unity  of  effect." 
In  1847,  in  a  review  of  Hawthorne's  "Mosses 
from  an  Old  Manse,"  he  republishes8  wilh 
hardly  the  change  of  a  word  the  portions 
of  his  former  review  emphasizing  the  im- 
portance of  "totality  of  effect."  The  year 
after  his  death  his  popular  lecture  on  "The 
Poetic  Principle"  is  published,9  in  which 
he  contends  that  even  "The  Iliad"  and 
"Paradise  Lost"  have  had  their  day  because 
their  length  deprives  them  of  "totality  of 
effect." 

This  phrase,  then,  viewed  in  its  later 
development,  is  not  only  the  most  significant 
phrase  that  Poe  ever  used  but  the  one  that 
most  adequately  illustrates  his  attitude  as 
critic,  poet,  and  story  writer.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  when  he  first  used  the 
phrase  he  attributed  it  to  William  Schlegel. 
The  phrase  is  not  found  in  Schlegel,  nor  any 

8.  In    the    November    number    of    Godey's    Lady's 
Book. 

9.  In  Sartain's  Union  Magazine,  October,  1850. 


172  POE  CENTENARY 

phrase  analogous  to  it.  Schlegel's  "Lec- 
tures on  Dramatic  Art  and  Literature"  hac 
been  translated  into  English,  and  in  Poe's 
other  citations  from  this  great  work  h( 
quotes  accurately.  But  in  this  case  he  was 
either  depending  upon  a  faulty  memory  or 
as  is  more  probable,  he  was  invoking  the 
prestige  of  the  great  German  to  give 
currency  and  authority  to  a  phrase  whict 
he  himself  coined  and  which,  more  than  an) 
other  phrase  that  he  ever  used,  expressec 
his  profoundest  conviction  about  the  archi- 
tecture of  literature.  The  origin  of  the 
phrase  is  to  be  sought  not  in  borrowing  bul 
rather  in  the  nature  of  Poe's  genius  anc 
in  the  formlessness  of  the  contemporary 
literature  upon  which  as  critic  he  was  callec 
to  pass  judgment.  Had  Poe  lived  long 
enough  to  read  Herbert  Spencer's  "Philoso- 
phy of  Style,"  in  which  economy  of  the 
reader's  energies  is  made  the  sum  total  oi 
literary  craftsmanship,  he  would  doubtless 
have  promptly  charged  the  Englishman  with 
plagiarism,  though  he  would  have  been  the 
first  to  show  the  absurdity  of  Spencer's  con- 
tention that  the  difference  between  poetr> 


POE  CENTENARY  173 

and  prose  is  a  difference  only  in  the  degree 
of  economy  of  style. 

Schlegel,  it  may  be  added,  could  not  have 
exerted  a  lasting  influence  upon  Poe.  The 
two  men  had  little  in  common.  Schlegel's 
method  was  not  so  much  analytic  as  historical 
and  comparative.  His  vast  learning  gave 
him  control  of  an  almost  illimitable  field  of 
dramatic  criticism  while  Poe's  limitations 
made  his  method  essentially  individual  and 
intensive.  The  man  to  whom  Poe  owed  most 
was  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.  The  influence 
of  Coleridge  grew  upon  Poe  steadily.  Both 
represented  a  curious  blend  of  the  dreamer 
and  the  logician.  Both  generalized  with 
rapidity  and  brilliancy.  Both  were  masters 
of  the  singing  qualities  of  poetry,  and  both 
were  persistent  investigators  of  the  principles 
of  meter  and  structure.  Though  Coleridge 
says  nothing  about  "totality  of  effect"10 

10.  The  nearest  approach  is  in  chapter  XIV  of  the 
"Biographia  Literaria:"  "A  poem  is  that  species  of 
composition,  which  is  opposed  to  works  of  science, 
by  proposing  for  its  immediate  object  pleasure,  not 
truth;  and  from  all  other  species  (having  this  object 
in  common  with  it)  it  is  discriminated  by  proposing 
to  itself  such  delight  from  the  whole,  as  is  compati- 
ble with  a  distinct  gratification  from  each  component 
part." 


174  POE  CENTENARY 

and  would  not  have  sanctioned  Poe's  appli- 
cation of  the  phrase,  it  is  undoubtedly  true 
that  Poe  found  in  Coleridge  his  mos 
fecundating  literary  influence. 

In  his  admiration  for  Coleridge  and  ir 
his  antipathy  to  Carlyle,  Poe  was  thoroughl) 
representative  of  the  South  of  his  day.  Th( 
great  Scotchman's  work  was  just  beginning 
and  Coleridge's  career  had  just  closec 
when  Poe  began  to  be  known.  Carlyle  anc 
Coleridge  were  both  spokesmen  of  the  grea 
transcendental  movement  which  originatec 
in  Germany  and  which  found  a  hospitable 
welcome  in  New  England.  But  transcen 
dentalism  in  New  England  meant  a  fresl 
scrutiny  of  all  existing  institutions,  social 
political,  and  religious.  It  was  identifiec 
with  Unitarianism,  Fourierism,  the  renuncia 
tion  of  dogma  and  authority,  and  the  increas 
ing  agitation  of  abolition.  "Communities 
were  established,"  says  Lowell,  "where  every 
thing  was  to  be  common  but  common  sense.' 
The  South  had  already  begun  to  be  on  the 
defensive  and  now  looked  askance  at  the 
whole  movement.  Coleridge,  however,  like 
Burke  and  Wordsworth,  had  outgrown  his 


POE  CENTENARY  175 

radicalism  and  come  back  into  the  settled 
ways  of  institutional  peace  and  orderliness. 
His  writings,  especially  his  "Biographia 
Literaria,"  his  "Statesman's  Manual,"  and 
his  "Lay  Sermon,"  were  welcomed  in  the 
South  not  only  because  of  their  charm  of 
style  but  because  they  mingled  profound 
philosophy  with  matured  conservatism.  No 
one  can  read  the  lives  of  the  Southern  leaders 
of  ante-bellum  days  without  being  struck 
by  the  immense  influence  of  Coleridge  and 
the  tardy  recognition  of  Carlyle's  message. 
When  Emerson,  therefore,  in  1836,  has 
"Sartor  Resartus"  republished  in  Boston, 
and  Poe  at  the  same  time  urges  in  the 
Southern  Literary  Messenger  the  republica- 
tion  of  the  "Biographia  Literaria,"  both  are 
equally  representative  of  their  sections. 

But  Poe  as  the  disciple  of  Coleridge  rather 
than  of  Carlyle  is  not  the  less  American 
because  representatively  Southern.  The  in- 
tellectual activity  of  the  South  from  1830 
to  1850  has  been  on  the  whole  underrated 
because  that  activity  was  not  expended  upon 
the  problems  which  wrought  so  fruitfully 
upon  the  more  responsive  spirits  of  New 


176  POE  CENTENARY 

England,  among  whom  flowered  at  last  the 
ablest  group  of  writers  that  this  country 
has  known.  The  South  cared  nothing  for 
novel  views  of  inspiration,  for  radical  reforms 
in  church,  in  state,  or  in  society.  Proudly 
conscious  of  her  militant  and  constructive 
role  in  laying  the  foundations  of  the  new 
republic,  the  South  after  1830  was  devoting 
her  energies  to  interpreting  and  conserving 
what  the  fathers  had  sanctioned.  This  work, 
however,  if  not  so  splendidly  creative  as 
that  of  earlier  times,  was  none  the  less 
constructive  in  its  way  and  national  in  its 
purpose.  Poe's  formative  years,  therefore, 
were  spent  in  a  society  rarely  trained  in  subtle 
analysis,  in  logical  acumen,  and  in  keen 
philosophic  interpretation. 

Though  Poe  does  not  belong  to  politics 
or  to  statesmanship,  there  was  much  in  com- 
mon between  his  mind  and  that  of  John  C. 
Calhoun,  widely  separated  as  were  their 
characters  and  the  arenas  on  which  they 
played  their  parts.  Both  were  keenly  alive 
to  the  implications  of  a  phrase.  Both 
reasoned  with  an  intensity  born  not  of  im- 
pulsiveness but  of  sheer  delight  in  making 


POE  CENTENARY  177 

delicate  distinctions.  Both  showed  in  their 
choice  of  words  an  element  of  the  pure 
classicism  that  lingered  longer  in  the  South 
than  in  New  England  or  Old  England;  and 
both  illustrated  an  individual  independence 
more  characteristic  of  the  South  then  than 
would  be  possible  amid  the  leveling  influences 
of  to-day.  When  Baudelaire  denned  genius 
as  "1'affirmation  de  1'independance  indi- 
viduelle,"  he  might  have  had  both  Poe  and 
Calhoun  in  mind;  but  when  he  adds  "c'est 
le  self -government  applique  aux  ceuvres 
d'art,"  only  Poe  could  be  included.  Both, 
however,  were  builders,  the  temple  of  the 
one  visible  from  all  lands,  that  of  the  other 
scarred  by  civil  war  but  splendid  in  the  very 
cohesiveness  of  its  structure. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  at  length  upon  the 
constructive  side  of  Poe's  genius  because  it 
is  this  quality  that  makes  him  most  truly 
American  and  that  has  been  at  the  same  time 
almost  ignored  by  foreign  critics.  Baudelaire, 
in  his  wonderfully  sympathetic  appraisal 
of  Poe,  considers  him,  however,  as  the 
apostle  of  the  exceptional  and  abnormal. 


178  POE  CENTENARY 

Lauvriere,11  in  the  most  painstaking  inves- 
tigation yet  bestowed  upon  an  Americar 
author,  views  him  chiefly  as  a  pathologica 
study.  Moeller-Bruck,12  the  editor  of  th< 
latest  complete  edition  of  Poe  in  Germany 
sees  in  him  "a  dreamer  from  the  old  mother- 
land of  Europe,  a  Germanic  dreamer."  Po( 
was  a  dreamer,  an  idealist  of  idealists ;  anc 
it  is  true  that  idealism  is  a  trait  of  th< 
American  character.  But  American  idealisn 
is  not  of  the  Poe  sort.  American  idealisn 
is  essentially  ethical.  It  concerns  itsel: 
primarily  with  conduct.  Poe's  Americanisn 
is  to  be  sought  not  in  his  idealism  but  in  th< 
sure  craftsmanship,  the  conscious  adaptatioi 
of  means  to  end,  the  quick  realization  o 
structural  possibilities,  the  practical  handling 
of  details,  which  enabled  him  to  body  fortl 
his  visions  in  enduring  forms  and  thus  t< 
found  the  only  new  type  of  literature  tha 
America  has  originated. 

The  new  century  upon  which  Poe's  nann 
now    enters    will    witness    no    diminution    o 

11.  "Edgar  Poe.   sa  vie   et  son  ceuvre:    etude   d 
psychologic  pathologique."     Paris,  1904. 

12.  "E.  A.  Poe's  Samtliche  Werke."    Minden  i.  W 
1904, 


POE  CENTENARY  179 

interest  in  his  work.  It  will  witness,  however, 
a  changed  attitude  toward  it.  Men  will  ask 
not  less  what  he  did  but  more  how  he 
did  it.  This  scrutiny  of  the  principles  of  his 
art  will  reveal  the  elements  of  the  normal, 
the  concrete,  and  the  substantial,  in  which 
his  work  has  hitherto  been  considered  defective. 
It  will  reveal  also  the  wide  service  of  Poe  to 
his  fellow-craftsmen  and  the  yet  wider 
service  upon  which  he  enters.  To  inaugurate 
the  new  movement  there  is  no  better  time 
than  the  centennial  anniversary  of  his  birth, 
and  no  better  place  than  here  where  his 
genius  was  nourished. 


180  POE  CENTENARY 

Dr.  Kent,  in  naming  the  recipients  of  the 
Poe  medals,  said : 

Mr.  President:  Your  committee  of  ar- 
rangements has  deemed  it  wise  to  have 
prepared  a  significant  memorial  of  this  inter- 
esting celebration  which  is  now  coming  to  a 
happy  close.  Through  the  kindness  and 
liberality  of  a  young  alumnus  of  the 
University  of  Virginia,  we  have  been  able  to 
procure  from  Tiffany  a  beautiful  bronze 
medal,  bearing  upon  the  reverse  the  seal  of  the 
University  of  Virginia,  and  on  the  obverse  the 
profile  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  with  the  date 
of  his  birth,  and  a  reminder  of  this  centenary. 
We  have  selected  as  the  recipients  of  this 
medal  those  who  were  active  in  procuring 
for  the  University  of  Virginia  the  Zolnay 
bust  of  Poe;  those  who  have  contributed  to 
the  success  of  this  present  celebration;  and 
others  who  by  signal  services  in  fixing  or 
furthering  the  fame  of  Poe  have  deserved 
well  of  his  alma  mater.  I  have  the  honor 
to  announce  to  you  as  worthy  recipients  of 
this  medal  the  following : 

The    medals    in    commemoration    of    this 


POE  CENTENARY  181 

Centennial  of  the  birth  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
are  bestowed: — 

On  The  University  of  Virginia: 

Library  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
Colonnade  Club, 
Jefferson  Society, 
Raven  Society. 

On  the  following  who  contributed  sig- 
nificantly to  the  success  of  the  movement  to 
commemorate  the  poet  with  a  bronze  bust: 

Sidney  Ernest  Bradshaw,  of  Furman  Uni- 
versity, 

Paul  B.  Barringer,  president  of  Virginia 
Polytechnic  Institute, 

William  A.  Clarke,  Jr.,  of  Butte,  Mon- 
tana, 

James  W.  Hunter,  of  Norfolk,  Va., 

Hamilton  W.  Mabie,  of  New  York, 

Carol  M.  Newman,  Virginia  Polytechnic 
Institute, 

William  M.  Thornton,  University  of 
Virginia, 

Morris  P.  Tilley,  of  the  University  of 
Michigan, 

Lewis  C.  Williams,  of  Richmond,  Va., 

George  Julian  Zolnay,  of  St.  Louis,  Mo. 


182  POE  CENTENARY 

On  the  following  who,  by  committee 
service,  participation  in  the  exercises,  con- 
tribution of  poems,  etc.,  have  contributed  to 
the  success  of  this  occasion : — 

Edwin  Anderson  Alderman,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia, 
W.  A.  Barr,  of  Lynchburg, 
James  C.   Bardin,  of  the  University  of 

Virginia, 
Arthur    Christopher    Benson,    Magdalene 

College,  Cambridge, 

Edward  Dowden,  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
Philip  F.  du  Pont,  of  Philadelphia,  Pa., 
Richard  Dehmel,  of  Germany, 
Georg    Edward,    of    Northwestern    Uni- 
versity, 

Alcee  Fortier,  of  Tulane  University, 
William  H.  Faulkner,  of  the  University 

of  Virginia, 
James    Taft    Hatfield,    of    Northwestern 

University, 

Charles  W.  Hubner,  of  Atlanta,  Georgia, 
John  Luck,  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
Walter  Malone,  of  Memphis,  Tennessee, 
Herbert  M.  Nash,  of  Norfolk,  Va., 
F.  V.  N.  Painter,  of  Roanoke  College, 
Va., 


POE  CENTENARY  183 

Willoughby  Reade,  of  the  Episcopal 
High  School, 

E.  Reinhold  Rogers,  of  Charlottesville, 
Va., 

Charles  Alphonso  Smith,  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  North  Carolina, 

Robert  Burns  Wilson,  of  New  York, 

Barrett  Wendell,  of  Boston,  Mass., 

Leonidas  Rutledge  Whipple,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia, 

James  Southall  Wilson,  of  William  and 
Mary  College. 

On  the  following  for  literary  services  of 
various  sorts  connected  with  fixing  and 
furthering  the  fame  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe : — 

Palmer  Cobb,  of  the  University  of  North 

Carolina, 

John  Phelps  Fruit,  of  Missouri, 
Armistead  C.  Gordon,  of  Staunton,  Va., 
James  A.  Harrison,  of  the  University  of 

Virginia, 

John  H.  Ingram,  of  London,  England, 
Charles  W.   Kent,  of  the  University  of 

Virginia, 
Emile  Lauvriere,  of  Paris, 


184  POE  CENTENARY 

Abel  Lefranc,  of  Paris, 

John  S.  Patton,  of  the  University  of  Vi 

ginia, 
Father  John  B.  Tabb,  of  St.  Charles  Co 

lege, 
William    P.    Trent,  of    Columbia    Un 

versity, 

George  E.  Woodberry,  of  Massachusett 
John  W.  Wayland,  of  the  University  ( 

Virginia, 
Mrs.  Susan  Archer  Weiss,  of  Richmom 

Va., 

Samuel  A.  Link,  of  Tennessee, 
Henry  E.  Shepherd,  of  Baltimore,  Md 
Robert  A.  Stewart,  of  Richmond,  Va., 
Thomas   Nelson    Page,    of   Washingtoi 

D.  C., 
George  A.  Wauchope,  of  the  Universil 

of  South  Carolina. 

For  peculiar  services  to  the  University  ( 
Virginia,  in  connection  with  Poe: — 

Mrs.    Henry    R.    Chace,    of    Providenc 

R.  I, 

Miss  C.  F.  Dailey,  of  Providence,  R.  1 
Miss  Amelia  F.  Poe,  of  Baltimore,  Md 
Miss  Bangs,  of  Washington,  D.  C., 


POE  CENTENARY  185 

Miss  Whiton,  of  Washington,  D.  C., 
Miss  Sara  Sigourney  Rice,  of  Baltimore, 
Md. 

As  representatives  of  the  Poe  family : — 

W.  C.  Poe,  of  Baltimore,  Md., 

Miss  Anna  Gertrude  Poe,  Relay,  Md. 

Mr.  Freeman's  programme  of  music  for  the 
evening  included  Mendelssohn's  Priest's 
March  from  Athalia,  arranged  for  the  organ 
by  Samuel  Jackson;  Bach's  Toccata  in  D 
minor;  Moszkowski's  Serenata,  arranged  for 
the  organ  by  Arthur  Boyse;  Schubert's  Mili- 
tary March  in  D  major  (by  request),  ar- 
ranged for  the  organ  by  W.  T.  Best. 


VII 

NO.   13  WEST  RANGE:     A  POE 
MUSEUM 

TOURING  the  Centenary  Celebration  t 
•"-^  room  which  Poe  occupied  while  a  stucU 
was  used  as  a  museum  for  Poeana.  It  w 
opened  on  January  16  under  the  auspices  of  t 
Raven  Society,  and  visitors  were  admitted  un 
the  20th.  A  considerable  collection  of  Poe  ma 
rial  was  displayed.  These  memorials  includ 
the  bronze  bust  of  Poe  designed  by  Zolna 
an  oil  painting  of  the  Fordham  Cottage 
Sadakichi  Hartman;  an  autographed  letl 
of  the  poet's ;  the  lace  cap  of  his  sister  Rosal: 
the  entire  library  of  Poe  literature  present 
to  the  University  of  Virginia  Library  by  I 
James  A.  Harrison,  editor  of  the  Virgir 
edition  of  his  works;  a  stuffed  raven  pi 
sented  by  an  alumnus  from  Montana;  a  nui 
ber  of  framed  letters  and  poems  by  disti 
guished  literary  men;  engravings  of  Po< 

186 


POE  CENTENARY  187 

residences;  and  a  very  interesting  group  of 
portraits  of  the  author  at  various  periods  of 
his  life.  This  material  was  lent  by  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia,  members  of  its  faculty, 
and  friends. 

This  little  room,  13  West  Range,  is  the 
only  spot  at  the  University  of  Virginia  actu- 
ally reminiscent  of  the  living  Edgar  Allan 
Poe.  That  he  did  pass  here  and  there  on  the 
grounds  is  of  course  true;  but  that  he  dwelt 
and  dreamed  in  this  dormitory  has  been  satis- 
factorily proven.  It  was  the  home  of  the 
poet.  Here  he  studied  and  wrote  for  the  bet- 
ter part  of  a  year;  here  on  the  bare  walls  he 
sketched  the  charcoal  studies  that  served  as 
decorations;  here  on  the  last  night  of  his  res- 
idence at  the  University  he  split  a  rough  deal 
table  to  furnish  fire-wood.  And  to  this  spot 
as  to  a  shrine  came  many  visitors  during  the 
Centenary  Celebration. 

The  room  itself  is  one  of  the  row  of  dormi- 
tories built  under  Jefferson's  direction  about 
eighty-five  years  ago.  It  forms  part  of  what 
is  called  "West  Range,"  a  long  line  of  single 
cloistral  cells,  in  front  of  which  extends  a 
covered  walk  or  arcade,  formed  by  the  over- 


188  POE  CENTENARY 

hanging  roof  supported  by  square  brick  cc 
umns.  It  looks  toward  the  west,  giving 
view  of  the  misty  reaches  of  the  Blue  Ridg 
and  nearer,  toward  the  south,  of  the  broke 
tree-clad  Ragged  Mountains, — the  scene  of  ti 
poet's  solitary  rambles  and  lone  communing 
Over  the  door  is  a  simple  bronze  tablet,  tl 
gift  of  Miss  Whiton  and  Miss  Bangs  of  Was 
ington,  D.  C.,  bearing  the  inscription :  D 
mus  parva  magni  poetce. 

Within  the  single  door  is  a  severely  ba 
apartment.  The  room  is  about  twelve  1 
fourteen  feet  in  dimensions,  with  a  compar 
tively  low  ceiling.  It  contains  one  windo 
opposite  the  entrance,  and  on  the  right  a  gra 
fireplace  with  a  plain  wood  mantel  shelf.  C 
either  side  of  the  mantel  are  recesses  a  coup 
of  feet  deep.  What  it  looked  like  in  the  poel 
day  can  only  be  conjectured,  but  it  was  pro 
ably  much  the  same  as  at  present;  indee 
there  is  sufficient  evidence  to  uphold  the  b 
lief  that  despite  the  hard  use  to  which  unive 
sity  dormitories  are  subjected,  the  floo 
though  patched,  is  composed  in  the  main  i 
the  very  boards  across  which  Poe's  restle 
feet  paced,  and  that  the  mantel  is  the  san 
before  which  he  brooded  during  long  watchc 


POE  CENTENARY  189 

For  many  years  the  room  was  used  as  a 
dormitory  inhabited  by  a  succession  of  super- 
stitious or  hero-loving  students.  About  1900 
and  for  three  years  thereafter  the  room  was 
the  office  of  Professor  Richard  H.  Wilson,  of 
the  Department  of  Romance  Languages.  In 
1906  the  University  turned  the  room  over  to 
the  Raven  Society,  an  honorary  society  com- 
posed of  the  literati  and  scholars  of  the  insti- 
tution. This  organization  had  taken  the  title 
of  Poe's  famous  poem  for  its  name,  and  a 
silhouette  of  that  solemn  bird  as  its  insignia. 
To  do  its  patron  honor,  it  desired  to  fit  out 
his  old  room.  In  1907  a  committee  was  ap- 
pointed, but,  owing  to  financial  difficulties, 
could  accomplish  nothing.  The  fall  of  1908 
a  committee  composed  of  L.  R.  Whipple, 
chairman;  R.  M.  Jeffress,  and  J.  B.  Holmes, 
was  selected  by  The  Ravens  from  their  num- 
ber to  furnish  the  room. 

The  society  voted  money  from  its  own 
treasury,  and  sent  out  an  appeal  to  its  alumni 
members.  The  latter  responded  generously, 
and  with  the  funds  secured  from  these  sources, 
the  committee  was  able  to  carry  out  its  in- 
tention. After  the  consideration  of  several 


190  POE  CENTENARY 

plans  it  was  decided  to  decorate  and  furnish 
the  apartment  as  a  student's  room  in  Foe's 
time.  The  place  had  fallen  into  a  state  of  se- 
rious disrepair.  With  the  assistance  of  the 
University  and  Dr.  W.  A.  Lambeth,  the  nec- 
essary changes  were  made.  Two  unsightly 
closets  were  removed,  the  floor  was  strength- 
ened, the  mantel  adjusted,  the  walls  plastered 
and  tinted,  and  the  paint  renovated. 

Then  with  the  co-operation  of  the  Biggs 
Antique  Company  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  and 
a  firm  of  decorators  in  St.  Louis,  Missouri, 
the  furnishing  was  partly  completed.  The 
furniture  is  all  solid  mahogany,  of  the  period 
of  1830,  and  most  of  the  pieces  are  genuine 
antiques.  Of  particular  interest  is  a  heavy  set- 
tee which  at  one  time  was  in  the  Allan  home 
in  Richmond.  The  table,  chairs  and  hangings 
conform  to  this  style.  The  room  has  been 
suitably  marked,  and  partly  furnished,  and 
with  the  contributions  that  will  doubless  come 
with  the  years,  will  finally  contain  worthy 
memorials  to  the  poet's  fame. 


VIII 
IN    THE    MINDS    OF    MEN 

P\R.  Alois  Brandl,  University  of  Berlin: 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  give  a  true  estimate  of 
Poe's  mission.  He  was  a  man  of  the  imagi- 
nation, and  he  did  a  great  deal  towards  rous- 
ing the  imagination  of  New  Englanders.  He 
was  a  literary  pioneer.  It  meant  a  great  deal 
in  his  day  to  build  a  poetical  hunting  lodge; 
the  temples  of  literature  had  to  follow.  I  am 
not  acquainted  enough  with  America  to  feel 
the  specifically  American  elements  in  him;  he 
is  rather  a  Coleridge,  separated  from  his  Eng- 
lish surroundings  and  transplanted  on  Massa- 
chusetts soil;  a  Coleridge  without  a  Words- 
worth at  his  side,  without  a  Napoleon  to  fight 
with,  but  in  a  colonial  country,  vast  and  peace- 
ful and  still  in  the  making.  A  German  will 
always  feel  reminded  of  E.  T.  A.  Hoffman, 
for,  like  him,  Poe  was  one  of  the  few  invent- 
ors that  Teutonic  literature  can  boast  of,  while 

191 


192  POE  CENTENARY 

the  fabulistic  faculty  is  more  frequent  amor 
Romance  people.     Altogether  it  has  been 
good  idea  of  the  University  of  Virginia  1 
celebrate  the  birthday  of  an  author  who 
known  to  the  educated  of  all  nations  as  or 
of  the  most  fascinating  "makers"  of  Americ; 

President  Paul  B.  Barringer,  Virginia  Pol] 
technic  Institute: 

I  have  always  been  an  admirer  of  Poe,  nc 
only  as  our  greatest  literary  genius,  but  as 
"good,  safe,  household  poet."  Poe  is  one  c 
the  few  writers  of  that  day  and  time  whos 
every  line  is  so  clean  and  free  from  taint  the 
it  can  be  put  into  the  hands  of  one's  twelve 
year-old  daughter. 

If  those  critics  who  always  insist  on  judg 
ing  Poe's  work  by  the  side  light  of  moralit 
would  take  the  internal  evidences  of  more 
cleanliness  found  in  his  work  itself,  rathe 
than  the  uncertain  evidences  of  loss  of  stamin 
which  come  to  us  through  manifestly  biase* 
tradition,  their  task  would  be  simpler.  Whe: 
a  man's  natural  inclination  towards  literar 
cleanliness  is  so  strong  that  it  cannot  be  un 
done  by  a  life  of  misfortune,  poverty,  an< 


POE  CENTENARY  193 

physical  suffering1,  he  should  at  least  be  given 
credit  for  his  better  instincts. 

Dr.  Sidney  E.  Bradshaw,  Furman  University : 

In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  all  the  critics  to 
"place"  him  in  American  literature,  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  continues  to  be  read,  admired,  and 
discussed  for  the  marvelous  qualities  of  his 
verse  and  prose.  There  is  none  like  him,  and 
whether  we  agree  with  one  critical  judgment 
or  another,  his  work  will  endure  as  long  as 
the  English  language  is  known  and  read. 

Professor  St.  James  Cummings,  South  Caro- 
lina Military  Academy: 

I  should  like  to  see  you  presiding  in  such 
a  high  ceremony  of  enlarging  the  realm  of 
Poe.  And  indeed,  I  should  be  greatly  pleased, 
to  vitalize  our  relations  face  to  face.  As  you 
may  easily  guess,  I  am  a  devoted  hanger-on  of 
Poe  :  and  by  that  I  mean  that  I  am  one  of  those 
who  maintain  a  breathless  and  eager  attitude 
of  suspense  and  devotion  toward  the  yet  un- 
revealed  fulness  of  grace  of  our  poet's  soul. 
I  hope  any  day  for  the  oracle  to  speak  with 
finality,  and  declare  the  true  estate  of  him 


194  POE  CENTENARY 

whose  bright  spirit  has  been  beating  its  way 
through  darkness  for  a  season.  In  my  Hop- 
kins days  I  was  allowed  to  feel  the  living  in- 
fluence of  Lanier,  who  had  already  left  our 
planet.  Here  in  Charleston  I  have  learned 
to  know  the  living  influence  of  Timrod,  long 
since  departed.  I  still  look  for  a  day — and  it 
may  be  to-morrow — when  the  Poe  beyond 
disclaimer  will  be  disclosed  alive  and  trium- 
phant— an  avatar  for  those  who  have  the  faith 
to  wait.  More  than  any  one  else,  Poe  repre- 
sents the  South.  Rich  and  poor,  shining  and 
dim,  passionate  in  soul  yet  calling  for  rights 
on  the  dictates  of  cold  reason,  the  poet,  the 
people  and  the  province  still  retain  a  mystery 
virginal  and  elusive,  but  are  undeniably  en- 
dowed with  resources,  with  a  proper  genius, 
deep  and  abiding.  The  Poe  world  will  some 
time  be  no  figure  of  speech,  but  will  enjoy  a 
day  and  a  night  of  its  own,  where  the  greater 
and  the  lesser  light  may  beat  in  splendor 
against  the  darkness;  and  the  God  of  har- 
mony will  call  it  good.  Hail  to  the  day! 
Your  centenary  celebration  cannot  fail  to 
awaken  for  a  finer  rendition  the  magic  music 
beyond  words  that  he  has  left  in  our  keeping. 


POE  CENTENARY  195 

Dr.  Charles  W.  Dabney,  University  of  Cin- 
cinnati : 

The  reference  to  No.  13,  West  Range,  re- 
minds me  that,  upon  entering  the  University 
of  Virginia,  I  was  first  assigned  to  that  room 
and  lived  in  it  for  about  a  month.  It  was 
a  dark,  dismal  room  with  a  window  looking 
out  on  the  backyard,  which  was  in  those  days 
filled  with  rubbish,  tin  cans,  etc.,  thrown  out 
from  the  kitchens  of  the  dining  hall,  and  I 
was  very  happy  to  get  as  soon  as  possible  a 
better  room  over  in  one  of  the  Dawson-Row 
houses.  The  event  did  not  fail,  however,  to 
make  a  great  impression  upon  me,  and  I  re- 
member distinctly  the  traditions  I  picked  up  at 
the  time.  Among  others,  Mr.  Wertenbaker 
told  me  his  usual  story  about  Poe  and  showed 
me  the  registration  book  where  he  signed  his 
name. 

Mr.  Hamlin  Garland,  Chicago : 

I  have  been  a  lover  of  Poe's  verse  since  my 
earliest  boyhood  and  have  read  almost  every 
book  and  nearly  every  article  about  him,  ex- 
cept some  of  the  very  recent  ones,  and  his 
wonderful  power  over  the  imaginations  of 


196  POE  CENTENARY 

men  is  still  a  kind  of  unaccountable  wizardry 
— I  mean  that  the  quality  that  resides  in  his 
verse  and  in  his  best  prose  is  like  the  magic 
that  rises  from  a  strain  of  really  original  mu- 
sic. His  wizardry  does  not  vanish  with  the 
years — at  least  in  my  case.  To  this  day,  "The 
Raven"  has  power  to  thrill  me.  Worn,  hack- 
neyed, if  the  critic  pleases,  there  is  still  some- 
thing in  this  poem  and  in  "The  City  in  the 
Sea"  and  other  of  Poe's  best  verse  which  defies 
the  years. 

Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  Max  Gate,  Dorchester, 
England : 

The  University  of  Virginia  does  well  to 
commemorate  the  birthday  of  this  poet.  Now 
that  the  lapse  of  time  has  reduced  the  insig- 
nificant and  petty  details  of  his  life  to  their 
true  proportion  beside  the  measure  of  his 
poetry,  and  softened  the  horror  of  the  correct 
classes  at  his  lack  of  respectability,  that  fan- 
tastic and  romantic  genius  shows  himself  in 
all  his  rarity.  His  qualities,  which  would 
have  been  extraordinary  anywhere,  are  alto- 
gether extraordinary  for  the  America  of  his 
date.  Why  one  who  was  in  many  ways  dis- 


POE  CENTENARY  197 

advantageously  circumstanced  for  the  devel- 
opment of  the  art  of  poetry  should  have  been 
the  first  to  realize  to  the  full  the  possibilities 
of  the  English  language  in  rhyme  and  alliter- 
ation is  not  easily  explicable.  It  is  a  matter 
of  curious  conjecture  whether  his  achieve- 
ments in  verse  would  have  been  the  same  if 
the  five  years  of  childhood  spent  in  England 
had  been  extended  to  adult  life.  That  "un- 
merciful disaster"  hindered  those  achieve- 
ments from  being  carried  further,  must  be  an 
endless  regret  to  lovers  of  poetry. 

Mr.   Maurice   Hewlett,   Old   Rectory,   Broad 
Chalke,  England: 

Nothing  that  I  could  say  could  add  to  Ed- 
gar Poe's  fame.  So  far  as  Europe  is  con- 
cerned he  is  secure  of  his  immortality.  I 
believe  myself  that  he  will  live  as  a  poet 
rather  than  as  a  prose  writer;  but  that  he  will 
be  remembered  as  a  genius,  a  creature  apart, 
one  of  those  rare  beings  whose  power  con- 
stitutes a  privilege,  I  have  no  doubt  whatever. 
I  rank  him,  in  the  quality  of  his  gift,  with  our 
John  Keats. 


198  POE  CENTENARY 

Mr.  Robert  Underwood  Johnson,  New  York : 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  Poe — and  hardly 
any  writer  has  been  so  praised  and  so  criti- 
cised— his  service  to  letters  has  been  im- 
mense. It  seems  to  me  that  the  chief  bases 
of  his  fame  are  his  original  type  of  imagina- 
tion, which  awakens  and  challenges  that  fac- 
ulty in  his  reader;  his  intense  intellectuality, 
and  the  opulence  of  his  rhythmic  resources, 
If  his  work  does  not  have  the  close  touch  with 
real  life  which  is  an  essential  of  great  writ- 
ing, he  has  created  a  realm  of  his  own,  in 
which  he  detains  us  by  a  sort  of  mesmeric 
power,  till  we  find  ourselves  "moving  about 
in  worlds  not  realized."  If  his  voice  has  not 
the  diapason  of  Emerson, — if  it  is  not  the 
vox  humana  of  our  more  philanthropic  day; 
if  his  theory  of  beauty  in  literary  composition 
leaves  out  of  account  the  beauty  of  conduct, 
nevertheless,  he  has  been  for  fifty  years,  and 
still  remains,  an  important  and  vital  influence 
in  poetry,  fiction  and  criticism.  His  name  was 
long  ago  indelibly  inscribed  in  the  world's 
Hall  of  Fame. 


POE  CENTENARY  199 

Professor  Thomas  C.   McCorvey,  University 
of  Alabama: 

*  *  *  The  greatest  of  American  poets — one 
of  the  greatest,  in  my  judgment,  of  the  Eng- 
lish speaking  race.  "Time  at  last  sets  all 
things  even,"  and  Poe's  alma  mater  is  to  be 
congratulated  upon  the  fact  that  tardy  justice 
has  slowly  but  surely  determined  his  rightful 
place  in  the  world  of  letters  as  a  genius  of 
the  very  highest  order.  The  University  of 
Alabama  has  a  special  interest  in  Poe's  cen- 
tenary from  the  fact  that  one  of  the  first  pro- 
fessors in  this  institution,  the  late  Henry  Tut- 
wiler,  was  a  fellow  student  of  the  poet  at  the 
University  of  Virginia.  While  the  earnest, 
diligent  student — intent  upon  appropriating 
during  his  college  course  as  much  as  possible 
of  the  world's  learning — had  little  in  common 
with  the  erratic  child  of  genius,  whose  imag- 
ination was  even  then  perhaps  "dreaming 
dreams  no  mortal  ever  dared  to  dream  be- 
fore," still  Dr.  Tutwiler  cherished,  throughout 
his  long  life,  a  lively  recollection  of  the  youth- 
ful escapades  of  the  poet  while  they  were  col- 
lege mates  at  Charlottesville. 


200  POE  CENTENARY 

Dr.  Edwin  Mims,  Trinity  College,  N.  C. : 

The  University  has  every  reason  to  be 
proud  of  Poe's  relation  to  it.  I  am  sure  that 
he  was  more  influenced  by  the  atmosphere  of 
the  University  than  many  people  have  thought. 
It  is  very  significant  that  a  Southern  Univer- 
sity should  place  such  emphasis  upon  literary 
work  as  you  do  in  this  celebration.  It  ought 
to  serve  to  call  renewed  attention  to  the  im- 
portance of  high  art  in  the  lives  of  our  people. 

Dr.  Frederick  Dunglison  Power,  Garfield  Me- 
morial Church,  Washington,  D.  C. : 

I  have  always  felt  America's  two  greatest 
poems  were  Poe's  "Raven"  and  Bryant's 
"Waterfowl."  Starkweather's  word  is  a  good 
one :  "To  use  a  geographical  .metaphor,  Poe's 
life  was  bounded  on  the  north  by  sorrow,  on 
the  east  by  poverty,  on  the  south  by  aspiration, 
and  on  the  west  by  calumny.  His  genius  was 
unbounded.  His  soul  was  music,  and  his  very 
lifeblood  was  purest  art."  Had  Poe  humor 
and  human  sympathy  he  would  be  our  great- 
est literary  genius. 


POE  CENTENARY  201 

Professor  Walter  Raleigh,  University  of  Ox- 
ford: 

I  have  the  profoundest  admiration  for  Poe; 
and  his  influence  on  European  literature  has 
been  enormous.  So  I  hope  I  may  say  what 
I  feel,  that  we  are  stifling  ourselves  with  lit- 
erary anniversaries.  I  begin  to  think  that 
English  literature  is  dead,  and  to  wish  that 
I  was  not  a  professor  of  it,  when  I  see  all 
this  monumental  stone-mason  work  engross- 
ing the  time  and  attention  of  literary  men  year 
after  year.  Have  they  nothing  worth  saying 
for  itself  that  they  must  search  in  the  calen- 
dar and  speak  when  the  clock  strikes?  We 
have  Johnson,  Tennyson,  Mrs.  Browning,  on 
hand  in  England — new  season's  goods  for  the 
window  to  get  the  reluctant  public  drawn  in. 
It  is  all  very  illiterate.  But  if  ever  a  cente- 
nary was  warranted,  yours  is, — in  Virginia, 
and  to  commemorate  a  poet  who  was  barely 
recognised  while  he  lived.  Pious  deeds  are 
good;  and  I  should  love  to  see  Virginia  in  its 
daily  life;  though  I  prefer  to  honor  Poe  by 
reading  him. 


202  POE  CENTENARY 

Professor  Franklin   L.    Riley,   University  of 
Mississippi : 

On  the  occasion  of  my  visit  to  the  Uni- 
versity last  summer  I  found  no  place  on  your 
campus  more  interesting  than  room  No.  13, 
West  Range.  I  am  delighted  to  learn  that, 
by  making  this  a  "Poe  Museum,"  it  will  be- 
come a  more  attractive  literary  shrine.  It  is 
especially  gratifying  to  know  that  the  great 
University  of  Virginia,  the  alma  mater  of  men 
of  letters  as  well  as  statesmen,  will  commem- 
orate in  a  fitting  manner  the  literary  services 
of  perhaps  the  most  talented,  certainly  one  of 
the  most  original,  authors  connected  with  its 
history. 

Dr.  William  James  Rolfe,  Cambridge,  Mass. : 

I  have  known  and  loved  the  poet  from  my 
first  acquaintance  with  him  in  my  college 
days,  sixty  years  ago.  The  pocket  edition 
of  his  poems  published  by  Middleton  (New 
York)  in  1863,  has  often  been  a  favorite 
companion  of  mine  in  travel  by  sea  and  on 
land;  and,  though  I  have  the  recent  1903 
edition  of  his  complete  works  in  five  volumes, 


POE  CENTENARY  203 

I  still  feel  a  particular  love  for  that  little 
book,  so  frequently  read  and  reread,  and 
associated  with  so  many  delightful  memories. 
"Annabel  Lee"  became  fixed  in  my  memory 
when  it  was  first  printed  in  1849,  and  I  can 
never  forgot  how  its  tender  music  and 
sentiment  first  moved  me. 

Professor  George  Saintsbury,  University  of 
Edinburgh : 

Thirty-three  years  ago,  when  I  was  en- 
deavoring to  make  some  opening  in  literature, 
I  horrified  and  almost  enraged  a  magazine 
editor  of  great  note  by  sending  him  an  essay 
tending  to  show  that  Poe,  with  all  his  faults, 
was  "of  the  first  order  of  poets."  I  am  of 
the  same  opinion  to-day. 

Professor     Erich     Schmidt,     University     of 
Berlin : 

Von  Edgar  Allan  Poe  hab'  ich  schon  in 
jungen  Jahren  starke  Eindriicke  empfangen 
und  bewundere  in  seinen  Werken  die  seltene 
Vereinigung  der  kuhnsten  Phantasie  mit  dem 
scharfsten  Verstand. 


204  FOE  CENTENARY 

Miss  Molly  Elliot  Seawell,  Washington,  D.  C. : 

As  time  passes,  the  conviction  grows  that 
Poe  had  the  fire  divine,  and  the  mere  survival 
of  his  scanty  and  incomplete  work  shows 
it  to  be  of  the  first  quality.  It  seems  a 
sort  of  reparation  for  his  melancholy  and 
unfortunate  life  that  the  world  which  once 
used  him  very  ill  should  now  be  eager  to  do 
him  honor. 

Dr.  Wilhelm  Victor,  University  of  Marburg: 

1st  es  mir  auch  nicht  moglich,  unsere 
Universitat  an  Ihrem  Festtage  pers6nlich 
zu  vertreten,  so  gereicht  es  mir  doch  zur 
hohen  Ehre,  als  Marburger  Professor  der 
Englischen  Philologie,  unsere  schriftlichen 
Gluckwiinsche  senden  zu  diirfen.  Ich  werde 
des  Tages  in  meiner  Vorlesung  oder  in  der 
Sitzung  des  Englischen  Seminars  gebuhrend 
gedenken  und  so  den  Marburger  Studenten 
der  Englischen  Philologie  ins  Gedachtnis 
rufen,  was  die  gebildete  Welt  dem  Genius 
des  Dichters  der  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque 
and  Arabesque"  und  des  "Raven"  schuldet. 


POE  CENTENARY  205 

Dr.  George  Armstrong  Wauchope: 

South  Carolina,  where  Poe  once  resided 
and  the  scene  of  "The  Gold-Bug,"  gladly 
joins  hands  with  his  alma  mater  in  honoring 
his  memory.  In  doing  so,  we  believe  that  we 
are  not  only  ratifying  an  act  of  public  justice, 
but  honoring  this  University  and  the  South, 
which  gave  his  radiant  name  to  the  nation. 

We  can  never  discharge  the  unpaid  debt 
which  the  whole  country  owes  to  Poe  for 
ow  (esthetic  declaration  of  independence, 
for  he  was  our  prophet  of  beauty  who  led  us 
willy-nilly  out  of  the  wilderness  of  phi- 
listinism,  puritanism,  and  provincialism.  The 
chief  causes  of  the  failure  in  America  to 
recognize  earlier  the  great  worth  of  Poe, 
have  been,  in  my  opinion,  the  challenge  of 
his  strange  and  abnormal  personality,  the 
hostility  aroused  by  him  as  our  first  searching 
and  authoritative  critic,  the  challenge  to  the 
literary  pharisees  of  the  North  of  his  aesthetic 
literary  creed,  and  closely,  though  perhaps 
unconsciously,  associated  with  the  foregoing 
causes,  a  certain  vague  though  deep-seated 
sectional  prejudice.  Happily  such  hindrances 


206  POE  CENTENARY 

to  a  just  appreciation  are  but  local  and  tem- 
porary, and  will  soon,  I  believe,  actually 
accelerate  the  crowning  and  apotheosis  of 
Poe.  Meanwhile,  foreign  criticism  has  hailed 
him  thrice-laureled  victor  in  his  chosen  lists 
— criticism,  song,  and  story — and  his  fame  is 
safely  enshrined  in  the  Pantheon  of  Southern 
hearts. 

Professor  Dr.  Georg  Witkowski,  University 
of  Leipsic: 

Der  Universitat  von  Virginien  spreche  ich 
zur  Feier  von  Edgar  Allan  Poe's  hundertstem 
Geburtstag  meinen  Gliickwunsch  aus.  An 
der  Feier,  die  einem  der  Groszen  im  Reiche 
eigenartiger  Phantasiebegabung,  einem  Er- 
schlieszer  ungekannter  Tief  en  des  Seelenlebens, 
einem  Dichter  von  seltenem  Formtalent, 
einem  Meister  unter  den  Erzahlern  aller 
Volker  und  Zeiten,  einem  der  starksten 
Anreger  neuer  Kunst  gilt,  nehme  ich  im  Geiste 
Teil,  und  wiirde  ihr  gern  personlich  beiwoh- 
nen,  wenn  es  mir  moglich  ware. 


POE  CENTENARY  207 

Professor    Richard    Wiilker,    University    of 
Leipsic : 

Ich  danke  vielmals  fur  diese  Ehrung,  und 
ware  gerne  dazu  erschienen,  um  so  mehr  als 
ich  Poe  als  Dichter  fur  origineller  und 
damit  bedeutender  als  Longfellow  betrachte, 
und  damit  fur  den  ersten  Dichter  Nord- 
Amerikas  erklaren  mochte. 

Mr.  William  B.  Yeats,  of  Ireland: 

I  wish  very  much  it  were  possible  for  me 
to  join  with  you  in  doing  honor  to  the 
memory  of  one  who  is  so  certainly  the 
greatest  of  American  poets,  and  always  and 
for  all  lands  a  great  lyric  poet.  But  the 
Atlantic  is  very  wide,  and  therefore  I  can 
only  send  my  thoughts  and  my  good  wishes 
to  you  in  Virginia. 

Mr.  Israel  Zangwill,  London: 

I  thank  the  University  of  Virginia  for  the 
honor  of  its  invitation,  and  regret  that  time 
and  space  oppose  themselves  to  my  desires 
to  pay  honor  to  the  memory  of  so  great  a 
creative  artist  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  In  verse 


208  POE  CENTENARY 

he  created  new  poems  and  new  rhythms, 
in  criticism  he  created  new  methods  of 
analysis,  in  prose  he  created  the  romance  of 
horror,  of  treasure-adventure,  and  of  criminal 
mystery.  He  is  one  of  the  few  masters  of 
the  short  story,  and  the  true  father  of 
Sherlock  Holmes.  While  nobody  has  been 
able  to  imitate  his  poetry,  his  prose  has 
created  a  school  in  France,  in  Germany,  and 
in  England,  to  say  nothing  of  literatures 
less  known  to  me.  The  University  of  Vir- 
ginia may  well  celebrate  the  birthday  of  the 
adopted  Virginian  who  ranks  as  the  most 
original  of  the  authors  of  America. 


POE  CENTENARY  209 

GREETINGS 

Dr.  Charles  W.  Kent,  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittee in  charge  of  these  exercises,  sent  greet- 
ings to  other  assemblages  met  to  honor  Poe : 

Mr.    Albert   E.    Davis,    the    Poe   Cottage   at 
Fordham : 

We  gather  in  his  University  room  and  you 
in  his  ill-starred  cottage  to  honor  the  genius 
that  has  made  each  domicile  a  Mecca. 

Dr.  Ira  Remsen,  Johns  Hopkins  University: 

The  University  of  Virginia,  mindful  of  Bal- 
timore's guardianship  of  Poe's  ashes  and  your 
University's  loyalty  to  the  Southland's  poets, 
congratulates  city  and  University  alike  on  the 
tribute  they  pay  to  his  genius. 

Authors'  Club,  London: 

The  University  of  Virginia  has  pride  in 
your  recognition  of  her  son. 

Dr.  George  A.  Wauchope,  University  of  South 
Carolina : 

The   University   of  Virginia  congratulates 


210  POE  CENTENARY 

the  University  of  South  Carolina  on  its  cele- 
bration of  the  Poe  Centenary.  May  the  land 
that  created  heroes  never  forget  them! 

Dr.  Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  Columbia  Uni- 
versity : 

Jefferson's  University  hails  Hamilton's  in 
their  common  recognition  of  Poe's  genius, 
and  yields  her  State's  right  in  him  to  the 
world-wide  federation  of  letters. 

Chancellor  Henry  M.  McCracken,  New  York 
University : 

The  University  of  Virginia  greets  New 
York  University  with  the  hope  that  the  Hall 
of  Fame  may  some  day  be  as  hospitable  to 
genius  as  is  your  University  to-day. 

To  this  the  Chancellor  responded :  New 
York  University  reciprocates  the  greeting  of 
the  University  of  Virginia,  and  will  gladly 
fellowship  with  her  in  communicating  to  the 
one  hundred  electors  of  the  Hall  of  Fame, 
representing  all  the  forty-five  states  of  our 
Union,  important  facts  and  enduring  senti- 
ments respecting  famous  Americans. 


INDEX 

Addresses:  Alderman  100-107,  Edward  73-99,  Fortier 
41-72,  Kent  34,  41,  73,  Nash  26-31,  Reade  16-19, 
Smith  159-179,  Wendell  117-158. 

Alderman,  Edwin  A.,  address,  100-107. 

Barr,  William  A.,  reference  to  Poe,  11-14. 

Dehmel,  Richard,  36. 

Edward,  Georg,  address,  73-99. 

Fortier,  Alcee,  address,  41-72. 

"Genius,"  108. 

Greetings,  messages  of,  209. 

Jefferson  Literary  Society,  5;  Poe  in,  12. 

Kent,  Charles  W.,  32,  34,  41,  73. 

"Lied  des  Lebens,"  40. 

Medals,  Poe,  180;  recipients,  181-185. 

Music  programme,  33,  185. 

Nash,  Herbert  M.,  address,  20-31. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  1-4,  Americanism,  159  et  seq.; 
in  France,  41;  in  Germany,  73  et  seq.;  in  Jeffer- 
son Society,  5,  7-8;  medals  of,  180;  nationalism, 
117;  poems  written  at  the  University,  9;  room 
(13  West  Range),  13. 

Poe  museum,  186,  202. 

Poems,  19-25,  37-40,  108-116. 

Raven  Society,  15,  35. 

"Raven,"   Willoughby   Reade's   interpretation,   16-19. 

Reade,  Willoughby,  16-19. 

Smith,  C.  Alphonso,  address,  159-179. 

Thirteen  West  Range,  Poe's  room,  13,  186-190,  195, 
202. 

"To  Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  poems:  Rogers,  24;  Benson, 
37;  Boyd,  38;  Dowden,  39;  Moomaw,  111. 

Tributes,  191-208. 

Wendell,  Barrett,  address,  117-158. 

"Whose  Heartstrings  Are  a  Lute,"  19. 
211 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


H343 
.  1960 


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